Apple Computer Inc. on Tuesday announced that the US version of its iTunes Music Store now has over one million songs in its download catalog. Apple said that it’s the first commercial online music download service to offer a million song catalog. That catalog includes offerings from all five major commercial record labels and more than 600 independent labels. Apple claims more than 70 percent market share of legal downloads for singles and albums.
The iTunes Music Store debuted in April, 2003 with about 200,000 songs in its catalog, and Apple has steadily grown the catalog since then. In June, 2003 the company began negotiating with independent record labels. Every Tuesday is New Music Day on iTunes, the day of the week when the iTunes Music Store makes available new content for download.
The iTunes Music Store works on both Mac OS X and Windows, and enables users to download individual singles for US$0.99 and many albums for $9.99. The service enables users to play songs on up to five computers, burn songs onto CDs as many times as they want, and play their digital music on the iPod, Apple’s popular portable digital music player. The iTunes Music Store is also available in the UK, France and Germany — prices and catalogs vary from country to country.
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