ThruIT

With the holiday season fast approaching many of us will soon begin frantically searching the internet to find the cheapest airfare available to book that last minuet trip back home. In the past, when I’ve begun my search I’ve always went to Kayak.com . Kayak does a great job of scraping almost every airline website and sites similar to it such as Hotwire, Expedia and Travelocity. Even though I know Kayak is searching all of these sites for me, even after it gives me the best available rate, I’m still always left with the question “If I buy this ticket tomorrow will it be cheaper?”. Up until this point there has been no easy way to answer this question without testing your luck and holding off on purchasing your ticket… until today.

It’s hard to believe that Apple launched its first attempt at the iTunes Store just six years ago. What started out as a digital store that had a selection of only around 200,000 songs has now transformed into an online marketplace for over 10 million Songs, Movies, Podcasts, Audiobooks, TV Shows, and Applications. Today, the iTunes Store has sold over 8.5 Billion songs, 1 Billion Videos, and 2 Billion apps. Apple and the iTunes store are now responsible for 88% of the “Legal” music download market.

Do we really remember what listening to and purchasing music was like before iTunes… or the iPod for that matter? These numbers are a testament to the type of transformation that’s been made from an industry which once relied almost solely on going to your local record store and purchasing a CD.