It's 20 years since iTunes was launched
In his first tech slot of 2021, Wayne Brown looked at an event that happened 20 years ago, that would permanently change the way we listen to music.
The iTunes music store launched in 2003 but iTunes actually started life in 2001, when the first generation iPod MP3 player, which stored 1,000 tunes was born- transforming the world of digital music.
Wayne tells us that it was initially a piece of software to manage mp3s of CDs that you already owned, which were ripped from the CDs onto the PC or Mac hard drive and then transferred to the iPod. Up until then Digital music had until then existed in a culture in which pirate sites loomed large and illegal downloading was rife. The file-sharing platform Napster, also launched 20 years ago, had opened up an enormous, if illegal, network through which people could freely share music.
Have a listen to his thoughts on where Apple, and other platforms like Spotify, have brought digital music since.
