Why the iTunes Store succeeded
The traditional tenth anniversary gifts of tin and aluminum are appropriate for the iTunes Store. Both durable and somewhat flexible, the iTunes Store has become the preeminent place to purchase music. Still, if not for the unintended assistance of a bungling music industry, the store might have been as ephemeral as iTunes’ social service, Ping.
Seeing the present through the past
The history of music retailing goes something like this. Throughout the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s the LP (Long Play album) was the long-form audio format du jour. If you wanted to purchase just a single song, you bought a 45-rpm disc, a smaller record that featured a hit song on side A and a lesser-known song on the B side. As tape players began to show up in homes and cars, 8-track tapes and cassettes became popular. You could purchase cassette singles, though they weren’t terribly popular.
As the ’60s ended and the ’70s began, albums increasingly became “works”—conceived as a whole rather than as just a collection of tunes to surround an artist’s chart topper. As a result, the single became less important. And the advent of audio compact discs in the ’80s did nothing to enhance the single’s popularity. Record companies claimed that the CD manufacturing process was expensive and so charged a premium for CD singles. Also, music buyers had become accustomed to listening to music uninterrupted for an hour or more. The idea of changing media after just a few minutes to play a single seemed quaint.
At the same time, with cassette decks a common part of an audio system, consumers had a way to make recordings of their records and CDs (and other cassettes if they had a dubbing deck) and then share that music with others via mixtapes. So common was the practice that people started to develop the idea that music could be freely (and legally) shared.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2036361/why-the-itunes-store-succeeded.html#tk.rss_all
