Following the success of the Apple’s iTunes online music store, after six months and 13m track sales, the second generation version has been released. Version one was restricted to owners of Apple computers who live in the USA, but version two removes one of those restriction by opening it to the Windows users. The USA-only restriction remains.
iTunes for Windows includes all the same features as the Mac version including tight integrations to the iPod. The first generation of Apple’s iPod, their market-leading portable digital music player, had two seperate version, one that connected to Apple computers, the other for Windows. Its second generation release, launched at the same time as iTunes online music store, united both of these into one machine.
Over the length of the service, the number of songs available for purchase have been gradually increased, and will reach 400,000 by the end of October.
Apple also announced a significant deal with AOL, which will offer AOL 25m US users a single-click-to-sign-up option later in this quarter. The intergration will go even further than this, enabling linking to individual iTunes track.
We feel this feature will be integrated into the AOL Weblogging tool, that has been in development since March, enabling Webloggers to recommend music and receive an affiliate percentage of value of the sale. This is a model for media sales we have long believed in and think it will only expand to include other media such as video.