The success of Apple’s iTunes Music Store (www.apple.com/music), where music fans pay to listen to their favourite tunes, has cheered Big Music, the five major labels that backed it in a trial run in the United States by making 200 000 songs available.
In its first month iTunes sold three million songs — one million in the first week alone.
Apple appears to have all the answers with an easy-to-use system that charges $0,99 a song, which is then the users’ to own. However, it is restricted to Apple users in the US, which is a small market given that Apple only has an estimated 3% to 5% of the global market. But the key message is that legitimate online music sales can work and be profitable.
Given that millions of songs are shared online every month, a legitimate means to purchase them, as Apple has shown, might translate into the golden egg the music industry wishes it could be. With a Windows version due at the end of the year, this successful experiment is set to engage a much larger worldwide audience.