By George Anderson
Apple Computer launched its new iTunes Music Store (www.applemusic.com) yesterday, providing consumers with a means to purchase music online for 99 cents a song.
The service, with a catalog of 200,000 songs, is currently only available to consumers with the latest Apple operating system. The company plans to have the service up and running for Windows users by year's end.
The Washington Post reports Apple's chief executive officer, Steve Jobs "hailed the iTunes service as a revolutionary answer to the problems facing the music industry, which has seen compact disc sales drop about 7 percent over the past year and online CD sales dive about 20 percent during the same time. The record industry blames online music piracy birthed by the Napster generation."
Moderator's Comment: Will Apple's iTunes Music Store be successful? Will online downloads become the dominant form of music distribution in the future?
The Washington Post reported that some Mac users were having difficulty accessing the iTunes store. We didn't find any problem getting to the site although we could not have bought and downloaded a song if we wanted. We're running on Mac 9.2 operating system currently. [George Anderson - Moderator]