thomas fitzgerald.net

With the recent five year anniversary of the launch of the iTunes music store it occurred to me that in all that time it was amazing that no one ever really successfully competed with Apple’s music store. Considering the sheer number of attempts by various competing stores you would have imagined that someone would have at least come a close second, but even big names like Sony and Microsoft couldn’t catch the iTunes juggernaut. The traditional theory is that it was the iPod that spurred sales of iTunes and the fairplay “lock in” that meant music purchased on the iTunes store would only play on iPods was what caused the store to dominate. Yet, theoretically, that should have had the opposite effect. Now that music is available DRM Free on Amazon, effectively removing that lock, you would have imagined that Amazon’s mp3 service would have taken a significant chunk of iTunes sales, yet numbers from NPD show it’s barely made a dent. So how is it that iTunes has been virtually unopposed all this time? The answer, I believe, is actually pretty simple.

Apple’s idea behind the iTunes store originally was that, in order to successfully deal with pirates, the answer was not try to fight them head on but to compete with them. iTunes launched as people were reeling from the collapse of Napster, and had grown accustomed to the idea of being able to download virtually any track whenever you want. I think that Apple realized that it was this aspect of downloading music that appealed to people, perhaps even more than the fact that it was free. When iTunes launched they provided that same feeling of being able to get any track you wanted at a moments notice. Granted it took some time for the library to grow to the size it is now, but that feeling of instant gratification was always there.

The real genius though, the thing that no one else ever managed to emulate to the same extent, is that when you buy music on iTunes you don’t feel like you’re buying music. The whole “buying” aspect of it is so well hidden from the user that you can happily download songs without the “I’m spending money” part of your brain kicking in to stop you. Several people have coined the phrase “iCrack” to describe the phenomenon. iTunes brought impulse buying to the next level. It kept that Napster tradition of being able to get any music you wanted while making it as painless and transparent as possible so you still felt like you were just downloading music. People would get a song in their head and go to iTunes and end up buying loads of other tracks too, without really considering that this was actually coming off their credit card.

The funny thing is too, that one of the record company moves to limit the hold iTunes has been to protect traditional album sales. Yet iTunes works so successfully because it is geared towards that “song in your head” impulse, instant gratification purchasing (that doesn’t really feel like purchasing). I know many people who buy lots of music off iTunes, but when they make a conscious decision that they want a specific album, will go out and buy the CD or ironically enough the LP (which seems to be a new trend). Had iTunes been limited to Albums it’s doubtful it would ever have taken off as much as it did.

The biggest irony of all this is that the technology that makes iTunes so seamless, so easy to impulse buy is “one click” licensed from Amazon, who are now considered Apple’s main if somewhat distant competitors, and their service simply doesn’t have the same disconnect from downloading music and actually paying for it that has made iTunes so successful.