The iTunes media platform was first released by

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

in 2001 as a simple music player for

Mac computers The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

. Over time, iTunes developed into a sophisticated multimedia content manager, hardware synchronization manager and e-commerce platform. iTunes was finally discontinued for new Mac computers in 2019, but is still available and supported for Macs running older

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s and for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

computers to ensure updated compatibility for syncing with new releases of iOS devices (refer to Devices section). iTunes enables users to manage media content, create playlists, synchronize media content with handheld devices including the iPod, iPhone, and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

, re-image and update handheld devices, stream Internet radio and purchase music, films,

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

shows, and audiobooks via the

iTunes Store The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...

History

Apple based the initial release of iTunes on

SoundJam MP SoundJam MP is a discontinued MP3 player for classic Mac OS-compatible computers and Rio-compatible hardware synchronization manager that was released in July 1999 and was available until June 2001. Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid developed SoundJa ...

, a program developed by

Bill Kincaid William S. Kincaid (born March 10, 1956) is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur notable for creating the MP3 player SoundJam MP with Jeff Robbin that was eventually bought by Apple and renamed iTunes. Work Robbin and Kincaid worked ...

and released by

Casady & Greene Casady & Greene (sometimes abbreviated to C&G) was a software publisher and developer active from 1988 to 2003. The company primarily released software for Macintosh, but also released software for Windows and Newton. Casady & Greene was formed ...

in 1999. Apple purchased the program from Casady & Greene in 2000. At the time of the purchase, Kincaid, Jeff Robbin and Dave Heller left Casady & Greene to continue development of the program as Apple employees. At Apple, the developers simplified SoundJam's user interface, added the ability to burn CDs, and removed the program's recording feature and

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different de ...

support. Apple released version 1.0 of the program under a new name "iTunes" on January 9, 2001 at Macworld San Francisco. Macintosh users immediately began poking through iTunes's

resource fork The resource fork is a fork or section of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system, which was also carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility, used to store structured data along with the unstructured data stored within the data f ...

, where they discovered numerous strings and other resources that indicated that iTunes was a re-engineered Sound Jam MP. Casady & Greene ceased distribution of SoundJam MP on June 1, 2001 at the request of the developers. Originally a Mac OS 9-only application, iTunes began to support Mac OS X with the release of version 1.1 in March 2001. Release 2.0 added support for the new iPod. Version 3 dropped Mac OS 9 support but added smart

playlists A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. The term has seve ...

and a ratings system. In April 2003, version 4.0 introduced the iTunes Store; in October, version 4.1 added support for

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

and

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

. Introduced at Macworld 2005 with the new

iPod Shuffle The iPod Shuffle (stylized and marketed as iPod shuffle) is a discontinued digital audio player designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. It was the smallest model in Apple's iPod family, and was the first iPod to use flash memory. The firs ...

, Version 4.7.1 introduced the ability to convert higher-bitrate songs to 128kbit/s AAC automatically, as these devices did not natively support audio encoded in

AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File ...

Apple Lossless The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music ...

formats, also improving the value proposition of the Shuffle's limited flash-only storage. Version 7.0 introduced

gapless playback Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, such that relative time distances in the original audio source are preserved over track boundaries on playback. For this to be useful, other artifacts (than timing-related o ...

and Cover Flow in September 2006. In March 2007, iTunes 7.1 added support for Windows Vista, and 7.3.2 was the last Windows 2000 version. iTunes lacked support for 64-bit versions of Windows until the 7.6 update on January 16, 2008. iTunes is currently supported under any 64-bit version of Windows, although the iTunes executable was still 32-bit until version 12.1. The 64-bit versions of Windows XP and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

are not supported by

, but a workaround has been devised for both operating systems. Version 8.0 added

Genius Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabili ...

playlists, grid view, and a new default visualizer. iTunes 9 added "Home Share" enabling automatic updating of purchased items across other computers on the same subnet and offers a new iTunes Store . Genius Mixes were added, as well as improved App synchronization abilities, extending the iPod Shuffle 128 kbit/s down-convert feature to all of Apple's AAC-capable devices. It also adds

iTunes LP iTunes LP (referred to in pre-launch press by the code name Cocktail) is a format for interactive album artwork introduced by Apple Inc. on September 9, 2009. It is similar to the CMX format being developed by the three major record labels, a ...

s to the store, which gives additional media with an album. Apple added iTunes Extras as well to the store, which adds content usually reserved for films on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

discs. Both iTunes LPs and Extras use web-standards

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

, and CSS. On September 1, 2010, Apple held their annual music press event where they unveiled an updated version: iTunes 10. The new version was available for download later that day. One major feature includes the integration of "

iTunes Ping iTunes Ping, or simply Ping, was a software-based, music-oriented social networking and recommender system service developed and operated by Apple Inc. It was announced and launched on September 1, 2010, as part of the tenth major release of i ...

", which brings a social factor to the iTunes experience. Apple CEO Steve Jobs also announced a new logo, one without a CD in the background because of the increasing popularity of iTunes digital downloads. In October 2012, Apple announced the launch of the iPhone 5 and

iPad Mini The iPad Mini (branded and marketed as iPad mini) is a line of mini tablet computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a sub-series of the iPad line of tablets, with screen sizes of 7.9 inches and 8.3 inches. The first- ...

, the refresh of the iPod and Mac lines, and the upcoming release of iTunes 11. Slated for release by the end of October, the launch was pushed back to November 29, 2012. This version included tighter integration with

iCloud iCloud is a cloud service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011 as a successor to MobileMe. , the service had an estimated 850 million users, up from 782 million users in 2016. iCloud enables users to sync their data to the cloud, inclu ...

, and a new user interface. Users' libraries now include all media they have stored in their iCloud account, along with any media unique to the device they are using. Media files stored in the cloud don't need to be downloaded before playing, allowing a larger collection to be accessible without increased disk usage. The new user interface includes a refreshed grid view, which replaces Cover Flow as the default layout method. With this change, Cover Flow is no longer available within the application. With the release of this software, the

was redesigned to remain consistent with the new interface, and the stores available on

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

devices. The social element Ping was also removed and replaced by increased

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

integration. Other minor changes included disabling the sidebar by default, and slightly altering the icon to match that of the

Mac App Store The App Store (also known as the Mac App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac ...

better. On October 16, 2014, Apple released iTunes 12, with a redesigned icon and interface, inspired by

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...

. With iTunes 12.1 and later, there is a new widget for notification center in OS X Yosemite, which allows the user to see what's playing, skip ahead, and even buy songs from iTunes Radio, right from notification center. It also improves performance when syncing to an iOS device. iTunes has been credited with accelerating shifts within the music industry. The pricing structure of iTunes encouraged the sale of single songs, allowing users to abandon the purchase of more expensive albums. This hastened the end of the

Album Era The album era was a period in English-language popular music from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s in which the album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption. It was primarily driven by three successive music recording ...

in popular music. On April 26, 2018, Apple released iTunes 12 for

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

via the

Windows Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

. The

Universal Windows Platform Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and first introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile (discontinued), Windo ...

app retains all features available in the desktop version, but will be updated and available through the Windows Store. On June 3, 2019, Apple stated that they would no longer include iTunes with future Mac computers. Starting with the operating system

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the publ ...

, Apple instead split iTunes into separate apps:

Apple Music Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple M ...

, Apple TV, and

Apple Podcasts Apple Podcasts (known as simply Podcasts in Apple operating systems) is an audio streaming service and media player application developed by Apple Inc. for playing podcasts. Apple began supporting podcasts with iTunes 4.9 released in June 200 ...

. iTunes continues to be available on Windows and on macOS operating systems prior to Catalina. Users can also still install iTunes versions 10, 11, and 12 on

and

macOS Big Sur macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and was released to the publi ...

using the Retroactive app.

Compatibility

Operating system versions

* iTunes Store requires at least version 11, dropping support for earlier versions. * On May 25, 2018, Apple dropped support for Windows XP and Vista, no longer allowing new purchases or re-downloading of previous purchases. * On June 30, 2018,

TLS 1.0 Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in secur ...

was discontinued, affecting devices on iOS 4.3.5, OS X 10.8.5 Mountain Lion and earlier. The minimum version able to manage accounts & edit payment information are iTunes 12.6.4 (released in April 2018) and 12.7.5 (released in May 2018). * Although new versions of iTunes have not been released for macOS since May 2019, compatibility with new iOS releases (iOS 13, 14) have been backported to iTunes 12.8.2 (for OS X 10.11 El Capitan, macOS 10.12 Sierra, 10.13 High Sierra) and 12.9.5 (for macOS 10.14 Mojave). * iTunes on

Windows Home Server Windows Home Server (code-named Quattro) is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates, released to manufacturing on 16 July 2007 and officially released o ...

may cause

data corruption In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

, which

fixed in an update.When certain programs are used to edit or transfer files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system that has more than one hard drive, the files may become corrupted

support. * iTunes usually requires latest service pack or point release to function. * a. Mac OS 9.1 is required to burn CDs. * b. iTunes supports both 32-bit and 64-bit editions for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. iTunes does not support 64-bit editions of Windows XP.

History

Compatibility

Operating system versions

Devices

Version history

iTunes 1

iTunes 2

iTunes 3

iTunes 4

iTunes 5

iTunes 6

iTunes 7

iTunes 8

iTunes 9

iTunes 10

iTunes 11

iTunes 12

See also

References

External links