The Apple Beat: Celebrating a decade of iTunes

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

It is hard to believe that iTunes is 10 years old. The music download service was revealed in 2003 as a legal and secure way to download music (later on movies and TV shows). iTunes put technology at the disposal of music fans but it also allowed for artists to profit from their music in the post-Napster era. For record labels and distributors, iTunes became a way to break new talent as well as cash-in on artists' back catalog of songs.

iTunes is running a retrospective on the past 10 years. Just fire up iTunes on your Mac or PC and A Decade of iTunes and you can look back on the year-by-year milestones that changed an industry and the way many of us sample, buy and consume our music, TV, movies and even books.

Looking back, there have been various historic releases on iTunes. My personal favourite was the availability of the entire Beatles discography in 2010 as well as the iTunes Festivals which feature dozens of acts and are streamed live via iTunes for all to watch for free.

Apple's success at building iTunes also leaned heavily into the foundation of the iOS app ecosystem. Just like how their dominance of the MP3 market with the iPod evolved into the app ecosystem and the app store. From a simple application that ripped CD's and managed iPod, iTunes has grown into the nerve-centre of Apple's content distribution network.

Here are a few fun key Canada-specific highlights from the past decade:

September 2003 - "Complicated" - Avril Lavigne is the 10th millionth song downloaded

March 2004 - "The Path of Thorns" - Sarah McLachlan is 50 millionth song downloaded on iTunes

December 2012 - "Call Me Maybe" - Carly Rae Jepsen is the Bestselling song of 2012

What's your fondest iTunes memory?