The Music Industry and Internet

TECHNOLOGY - DIGITAL AUDIO PLAYER

A digital audio player, more commonly known as an Mp3 player is an electronic device that stores, organizes and plays audio files. Knowadays these hand held devices can do all sorts of things, like play games, watch videos, hold contact details and store photos. In particular i will be looking at the Apple iPOD and the iTunes software that goes with it.


The iPod is a brang of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first model was launched on October 23rd 2001 leading up to Christmas. Now in 2008 the product line consists of the iPod Classic, iPod touch, iPod nano and iPod shuffle all storing media on an internal hard drive. The Apple iTunes software is sued to transfer the music to the MP3 player. iTunes stores music on the user's computer and can play, burn and rip music from a CD. As of September 2007, the iPod had sold over 110 million units worldwide making it the best-selling digital audio player in history.



On January 22nd 2008, Apple reported the best quarter revenue and earnings in Apple's history so far. Apple posted record revenue of $9.6 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion. 42% of Apple's revenue for the First fiscal quarter of 2008 came from iPod sales, followed by 21% from notebook sales and 16% from desktop sales. Apple has sold over 140M iPods to date. It also posted record Mac and iPod sales to date. (Wikipedia)