May 5, 2003: iTunes Music Store, Instant Hit

It was Mac only, it wasn't free, and it was a smash hit. It was the Apple iTunes Music Store. Open less than a week, the music store sold more than one million tracks.

The success is all the more astonishing because peer-to-peer networking hadn't substantially changed since the demise of Napster. Users were more than able to hop on any one of the myriad P2P networks that existed and download any of Apple's 200,000 listed tracks for free, unencumbered by Apple's transparent DRM.

The real selling point of Apple's music store was convenience and legality. The process of downloading was much less a "hit and miss" affair on iTunes than users experienced when using the P2P alternatives, and some people just wanted to be legal. Whatever the reason for users’ adoption, users embraced the store in a mad rush. Apple announced iTunes had passed the one million mark for songs sold on May 5, 2003, less than one week after the store opened.