Don't Steal Music: How the iPod Changed the World

 Twenty years ago, Apple introduced the iPod to the world, a portable music player widely believed to revolutionize the industry. How the iPod gained such popularity and why users believe that Apple, thanks to its gadget, defeated piracy - in the material "Gazeta.Ru". techqueer

First iPod

On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPod with the slogan "1000 songs in your pocket." The first version of the portable music player came with a 5GB or 10GB hard drive and connected only to MacOS computers, and was controlled by a physical scroll wheel.

In his keynote address, Jobs described the Mac as the hub of Apple's digital lifestyle and the new iPod as an ultra-portable music add-on to that lifestyle. A 5 GB iPod was offered at a price of $ 399 (about 28 thousand rubles at the current exchange rate) and could hold up to 1000 songs. The player had a 10-hour battery life, a black and white LCD screen, was equipped with today's outdated FireWire connectivity standard, and the iPod sticker read Don't Steal Music.

The line of "classic" iPods came out until 2007, with support for Windows, USB, color screen and hard drives up to 160 GB.

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The iPod kicked off Apple's quest to make music the mainstay of its customers' lives by finding a simpler and easier way to distribute songs than massive CD players and other MP3 players. Music is more a part of Apple today than ever: in 2020, the company made $ 4.1 billion (about 288 billion rubles) from Apple Music, and the iPhone is now, in fact, a modern version of the original iPod twenty years ago.

It is believed that by introducing the iPod, Apple not only made it easier for users to listen to and buy music, but also helped musicians make money from their work by defeating piracy and began to pay them for purchases in iTunes and Apple Music. However, leading analyst at Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin believes that Apple did not defeat piracy thanks to the iPod and iTunes, but rather destroyed the music industry.

“Steve Jobs has cracked the market in terms of prices - previously, the prices for physical media, if you buy an album on a conditional CD, were higher. The iPod took off relatively, with not very large sales. Several million pieces per quarter - this is not very significant for the market as a whole. The iPod has largely destroyed, in the literal sense of the word, the music industry, because it deprived record companies and musicians of money, ”Murtazin said.

It is also widely believed among apple fans that the white iPod earbuds became iconic at the time, and Apple has used them in advertisements over the years. The most popular advertising image for headphones and iPods is the silhouettes of people wearing white headphones, which stand out in the big picture thanks to their color. Some users note that these headphones were something like a fashionable handbag, thanks to which it was possible to define "their" person.

“Apple knows how to impose visual images, and this led to the fact that when the iPod became quite popular, their white headphones became a reflection of the fact that“ I listen to this kind of music, ”said Murtazin.

The expert also noted that the most memorable Apple player for him was the iPod Classic with a hard drive, thanks to which he could download a sufficient amount of music on a trip.

“Oddly enough, the iPod Classic was one of those players that sounded good with the branded headphones removed,” the analyst said.

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