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The store was launched on the 29^th of april 2003 and was selling songs only on the 12^th of October 2005 video sales began, by the 12^th of September 2006 full length videos were available for purchase.

The audio files that you purchase from the store use the AAC format with added encryption, and this encryption is based on FairPlay DRM system. You are allowed to use the music on up to 5 computers and an unlimited number of iPods can play the music. You can remove DRM from the music files by burning the music onto an audio CD and then recompressing them, this will however result in reduced sound quality. DRM can also be removed using some software from other suppliers and not Apple. Apple sealed a deal with EMI to sell DRM-free high quality songs in iTunes stores in a category called iTunes Plus. Individual songs were charge at $1.29 which costed 30 cents more than the regular DRM songs and entire albums could be purchased at $9.99 as DRM encoded albums. On the 17^th of October 2007 Apple reduced the cost of iTunes Plus tracks to $0.99 per track, which was the same cost as DRM encoded tracks.

iPods are designed in such a way that they will not play music from rival stores that sell music like Microsoft's protected WMA or RealNetworks' Helix DRM such stores include Napster and MSN Music. Some critics have said Apple is only creating problems for itself by locking its users to using the iTunes stores only, but however Apple is not interested in making much profit with the music sales from iTunes but they are using the stores to promote the iPod brands. Apple has however allowed some stores that do not use the DRM encoding to make sales of tunes that can be played on iPod's and such stores include eMusic and Amie Street.

In September Apple launched the iTunes Wi-Fi Music store in a media event whose theme was "The beat goes on". This service makes it possible for users to access the music store from either an iPhone or an iPod Touch and can download the songs directly to devices that can be synced to the user's iTunes Library.