iTunes Music Store Hits Five Million Downloads

Apple today announced that music fans have downloaded over five million songs from the iTunes Music Store since its launch eight weeks ago today. In addition, over 46 percent of the songs have been purchased as albums, and over 80 percent of the over 200,000 songs available on the online store have been purchased at least once. Apple also announced that it will ship its one millionth iPod this week. Apple introduced the third generation of its ultra-portable digital music player in April, and it has become a huge hit with music lovers worldwide.

“The iTunes Music Store is changing the way people buy music”, said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “Selling five million songs in the first eight weeks has far surpassed our expectations, and clearly illustrates that many customers are hungry for a legal way to acquire their music online”.

“The iTunes Music Store has defined what it means for people to have musicinstantly — and legally — at their fingertips”, said Doug Morris, Universal Music Group's CEO. “The iTunes Music Store is pushing us into the future of how music is produced and consumed”.

“Apple has shown the music industry, artists and consumers that there is asuccessful and easy way of legally distributing and obtaining music over theInternet”, said Roger Ames, Warner Music Group's chairman and CEO. “Everyone in our industry is looking for a solution and Apple is leading the way with the iTunes Music Store”.

The iTunes Music Store lets customers easily search a broad catalogue ofover 200,000 tracks to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album.With just one click, US-based customers can purchase the songs they wantand download them directly into their iTunes 4 music library for just 99cents per song, without any subscription fees. Songs are downloaded inpristine digital quality and can be burned onto an unlimited number of CDsfor personal use at no extra cost, played on up to three Macintoshcomputers, listened to on an unlimited number of iPods, and used in otherMac applications, including iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. Thousands of new songs,new albums and exclusive tracks are added to the iTunes Music Store everyweek. PC users will be able to enjoy downloading songs from the iTunes MusicStore when it is released for the Windows platform by the end of this year.

The new super-slim iPods store up to 7,500 songs in a stunning enclosurethat is lighter and thinner than two CDs. iPod is the only portable musicplayer with Apple's patent pending Auto-Sync, an innovative feature thatautomatically downloads entire music libraries into iPod and keeps itup-to-date whenever the iPod is plugged into a Mac or Windows PC. iPodfeatures completely solid-state ‘no moving parts' navigation wheel andbuttons; an elegant dock with audio out for fast and easy connection to acomputer or stereo; an ‘On-The-Go' playlist so users can build a playlist right on their iPod; and a customisable main menu so users can promote the features they use most often to their top level menu. The iPod familyincludes a 10GB model for a suggested selling price of £249 (inc VAT), a15GB model for £299 (inc VAT) and a high-capacity 30GB model that holds upto 7,500 songs for £399 (inc VAT).

Press Contacts:
Apple UK and Ireland Public Relations
Email: media.uk@apple.com
Phone: (020) 8218 1440