(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is headed eight time zones away, so (Roughly) Daily will be on hiatus for a bit; regular service should resume on or about May 7.

In the meantime, enjoy Michael Turvey‘s (@tichaelmurvey) interactive “Koi Pond.”

* Haruki Murakami

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As we contemplate, we might recall that it was on this date in 2003 that Apple launched iTunes. Downloading music had been already popularized by Napster, torrents, and others, but they operated largely outside the law, “sharing”; the sale of music was still confined largely to brick-and-mortar stores (and in a nascent way, to e-tailers like Amazon).

Steve Jobs approached Warner Music, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music to offer their music for 99 cents a song (and ten dollars for a full album). Their sales wounded by illegal file-sharing, the music labels were eager to staunch the bleeding; they struck the deal with Jobs.

iTunes was an instant success, selling over one million songs in its first week; it became the biggest music vendor in the U.S. five years later and remained a force for another decade or so… when it was overtaken by streaming.

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