This is an old article, appearing on the 10-year anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, but given the big changes Apple has announced for macOS Catalina, including a complete iTunes revamp, seemed appropriate.

A great read. Here’s a taste:

In its first week, iTunes sold one million downloads and soon became not only the top online music retailer but, displacing Walmart and Best Buy, the top music retailer. In a way, the service hastened the revolution that record executives feared the most – it shifted the business from expensive, high-revenue CDs to cheap, low-revenue singles. But there was no choice. There would always be online music thieves, but most consumers simply needed an easy, legal way to download songs. This was how fans would buy music in the future, whether the record industry liked it or not.

Jobs had incredible vision. Not sure anyone else could have pulled this off.