Adaptive Path Blog

It’s hard to believe that iTunes Music Store just turned five years old yesterday, that there was a time (for two years!) that the iPod (iTunes’ better-looking older sibling, the Marcia to its Jan) relied on either users slowly converting all their analog CDs to digital, or simply stealing music online.

While iPod gets all the press and adoration, it seems clear that iTunes, for all its faults, is the little app that could. iTunes is the secret sauce of the iPod experience, and the music store is, if not at the center, than at least an incredible piece of that. Imagine trying to put a major ecommerce store in the middle of another application (Word, Photoshop, etc.) and it becomes clear marvel that is iTunes Music Store.

Of course, the store itself is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to that marvel. Were it not for the amazing technical and business infrastructure backstage (which remains (as it should) mostly invisible), we’d be downloading donated MP3s. Slowly. And forget about movies, TV, podcasts, etc. The store has expanded so that the “music” in iTunes Music Store seems almost silly. iTunes Media Store is more like it. But I quibble.

Happy fifth birthday! You don’t look a day over four. Now could you please go get Twin Peaks for me?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 6:38 am and is filed under Experience design, Experience strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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