Apple celebrates decade of iTunes

It changed the way we discover and listen to music, but as Apple’s iTunes celebrates 10 years dominating the marketplace, it faces new challenges.

The store, which started out with 200,000 songs, reached 25bn downloads earlier this year. Since its launch on April 28, 2003, it has accrued a catalogue of more than 35m songs and has about 435m active account- holders. On average, over 15,000 songs are downloaded every minute.

Gennaro Castaldo of HMV said the music store — along with the iPod — had “undoubtedly” played a major part in changing the way consumers discover and listen to music.