Tag Archives: iTunes

iTunes shares 2015’s top-selling music, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Thanks to its undeniable ubiquity, Apple’s iTunes storefront is a great barometer of the most popular media sold in entertainment. Let’s take a look at who and what performed well in 2015…

Included in iTunes’ top-selling albums are Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Adele’s 25 (which came out only weeks ago!). The top-selling song of the year is Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars’ addicting “Uptown Funk.” Hanging around in the top 20 are Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen,” The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” and of course, Adele’s “Hello.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple likes to share hand-picked Editor Choice awards and they include: Drake (Best Artist), Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (Best Album), The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” (Best Song), and Bryson Tiler (Best New Artist).

Top-selling movies include Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection, Big Hero 6, American Sniper, Inside Out, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Apple’s featured best movies include Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy, and Dope. In TV, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Scandal, and The Blacklist are amongst the year’s best-selling series. Apple’s featured best TV shows include Mr. Robot, Fargo, UnREAL, and Inside Amy Schumer.

Apple’s App Store is home to the largest library of apps in the world. The best app to help pass the time with friends, Heads Up!, keeps its crown as the top-selling paid app in 2015. Rounding out the top five paid apps: Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Trivia Crack (ad free), Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and Facetune. The top 5 best-selling free ones are always easy to nail: Trivia Crack, Facebook Messenger, Dubsmash, Instagram, and Snapchat. Don’t worry–YouTube, Facebook, Uber, and Crossy Road don’t trail far behind.

Calling all book readers! Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, E L James’ Grey, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and John Green’s Paper Towns are among the best-selling fictional novels. Top-selling non-fiction novels include Chris Kyle’s American Sniper, Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, and Erik Larson’s Dead Wake.

Lastly, in the realm of podcasts, NPR’s Fresh Air is the most downloaded of the year. Apple named Mystery Show Best New Podcast and WTF with Marc Maron Best Classic Podcast.

Want more? Open iTunes to view all the top-selling media across Apple’s digital ecosystem.

WWDC15: Apple updates OS X, iOS & watchOS, unveils Apple Music streaming service

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2015’s World Wide Developers Conference was all about software for the house that Jobs built. Apple CEO Tim Cook led an extensive first-look extravaganza at the many updates coming to the company’s myriad operating systems. The desktop OS X, the mobile iOS, and even the new watchOS are all receiving user experience and performance upgrades soon. Additionally, Apple unveiled its next revolution in the music industry: there was the iPod, and iTunes, and now Apple Music. Jump after the break to learn all about it. Continue reading WWDC15: Apple updates OS X, iOS & watchOS, unveils Apple Music streaming service →

iTunes shares 2014’s top-selling music, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Apple returns to reveal its best-selling media across the major entertainment industries including music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. Consumers flock to the iTunes Store for the latest and greatest, and so it’s always fun to look back and discover which products made the biggest dent in their respective categories.

The top-selling album of 2014 is actually a soundtrack: it’s Disney’s Frozen! Included in the top 20 are T-Swift’s 1989, Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour, Beyonce’s self-titled surprise album, and Lorde’s magnificent debut Pure Heroine. The top-selling song of the year is Pharrell Williams’ addictive “Happy,” a song that made waves in the animated feature Despicable Me 2. Also in the top 20 are John Legend’s “All of Me,” Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse,” Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” A Great Big World’s “Say Something,” and OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple likes to share hand-picked Editor Choice awards and they include: Best Artist (Beyonce), Best Album (Taylor Swift’s 1989), Best Song (Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”), and Best New Artist (Sam Smith).

Top-selling movies include Frozen, The LEGO Movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, Catching Fire, and Neighbors. Apple named Guardians of the Galaxy Best Blockbuster, The LEGO Movie Best Family Movie, Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater is crowned Best Director, and Obvious Child is Best Discovery. Moving over to TV, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, and Scandal are amongst the year’s best-selling series. Apple named Fargo TV Show of the Year, The Honorable Woman is Best Discovery, Key & Peele is Best Breakthrough, and Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s performances in True Detective are commended.

Apple’s App Store truly houses the best app ecosystem–there are just so many to choose from. In 2014 people gravitated toward trivia game Heads Up!, which receives my personal Best App To Help Pass The Time Award. Other best-selling paid apps include Minecraft–Pocket Edition, Afterlight, Plague Inc., Sleep Cycle alarm clock, and Facetune. And I bet you can easily guess the top 5 best-selling free ones: Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. 5 for 5? Thought so.

Are you a reader? John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Veronica Roth’s Insurgent, Allegiant, and Divergent are among the best-selling fictional tales. Top-selling non-fiction novels include Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson, Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent, and Duty by Robert M. Gates.

We cannot forget about podcasts! I will share with you my favorite podcast this year. It’s Serial, from This American Life. It’s being called the most popular podcast of all-time and for good reason. It tells a highly serialized and incredibly addicting true crime story across 12 episodes. It’s like a riveting TV drama, except you get to imagine all of the characters and settings in your head. In addition to Serial, which Apple calls the Best New Podcast, other top-selling podcasts include works from NPR, HowStuffWorks.com, Joe Rogen, Carolla Digital.

Open iTunes to view all of the best-selling media across Apple’s digital storefronts.

iTunes shares 2013’s top-selling albums, movies, TV shows, apps & more

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Apple’s iTunes, App, and iBooks Stores have truly become the destination on the Internet to discover and download the latest and greatest in music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books. And every year the house that Jobs built tallies the best-selling media, so let’s take a look.

In music, Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience is crowned the top-selling album of 2013. Also landing in the top 15 are Imagine Dragons’ Night Visions, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ The Heist, and Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. The top-selling song? M&R’s “Thrift Shop,” followed by Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive.” In addition to these top-selling lists, Apple has hand-picked Editor Choice awards; namely, JT is named Artist of the Year, M&R’s The Heist is Album of the Year, Lorde’s “Royals” is Song of the Year, and Kendrick Lamar (Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City) is Breakthrough Artist.

The top three best-selling movies are Skyfall, Wreck-It Ralph, and Argo. Apple named Gravity Best Movie and Despicable Me 2 Best Animated Movie. On TV, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and The Walking Dead lead the top-selling series of 2013. Vince Gilligan’s masterpiece is TV Show of the Year, Scandal is Best Breakthrough, and Orphan Black is Best Discovery.

The best-selling paid app is Minecraft – Pocket Edition; also making that list is Heads Up!, Temple Run: Oz, and Angry Birds Star Wars. The best-selling freebie? Candy Crush Saga, of course, followed by Temple Run 2, Vine, Google Maps, and Snapchat.

The most popular books (fiction) are Dan Brown’s Inferno, E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Apple quite liked Tenth of December by George Saunders.

Click here to browse Apple’s Best of 2013 charts across all the various forms of media.

iTunes shares year’s top-selling songs, albums, apps & more

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At the end of the year Apple digs into its archive of music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts to share with its customers its top-selling content. Since the iTunes Store and the App Store are so prolific these days, I deem it appropriate to take a look at what we bought up from Apple’s widespread ecosystem in 2012.

In the music department, Apple lists the 20 top-selling songs and 25 top-selling albums of the year. Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” lands at #1 on the song list and rounding out the top 5 are Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Fun.’s “We Are Young,” Maroon 5’s “Payphone,” and Nicki Minaj’s “Starships.” Maroon 5 managed to land on this chart twice; “One More Night” comes in at #17. Also, Flo Rida’s hit singles “Whistle” and “Wild Ones” show their staying power securing the #9 and #10 slots, respectively. For the second consecutive year in a row, Adele’s 21 sits high as the most purchased album of the year; what follows is Taylor Swift’s Red, Mumford & Sons’ Babel, One Direction’s debut Up All Night, and Fun.’s Some Nights. The only artist to show up twice on this chart is Mumford & Sons; their 2010 effort Sigh No More keeps selling and fell in the #6 position.

In addition to these charts, Apple handpicks their own selections in a section they call “Editor’s Choice.” They named Frank Ocean Best New Artist and they had this to say about his much buzzed about release Channel ORANGE: “Deftly original, the brooding R&B outcast and Odd Future cohort spilled a can of stinging venom and vulnerability that spread worldwide.” Grizzly Bear’s Shields was awarded Best Album, Fun.’s infectious single “We Are Young” nabbed Best Song, and they enjoyed the fusion of country and gospel from The Lumineers so much to label their self-titled debut release Breakthrough Album.

The Hunger Games, Downton Abbey, Fifty Shades of Grey, Angry Birds Space, and YouTube dominated the other content categories. Click here to browse Apple’s Best of 2012 charts (the link opens in iTunes).

The redesigned iMac ships today; Apple releases “dramatically simplified” iTunes 11

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At Apple’s October special event that introduced the world to iPad mini, Tim Cook and company also unveiled the eighth iteration of the all-in-one iMac. This week Apple made it official that the 21.5-inch model will ship Friday, November 30–that’s today! If you’ve been holding out for the 27-inch behemoth then your wait continues. Apple hasn’t pegged it with a release date; they’re only saying it will start selling in December. The redesigned iMac houses its miniturized tech inside an aluminum and glass enclosure that measures just 5mm thin at its edge. A new storage option called Fusion Drive allows customers to customize their computer with 128GB of flash storage and either a 1TB or 3TB HDD; the two are fused into a single volume to provide faster read and write speeds. The 21.5-incher starts at $1,299 and is available for purchase today.

In other Apple news, iTunes 11 was finally released on Thursday. The redesigned music player and device manager features a new look with new library views and an updated Store layout, Up Next allows you to queue up songs, playlist creation is simpler, the MiniPlayer is smaller but enhanced, and iCloud is built-in making content downloaded on any iOS device instantly accessible in your iTunes library, Mac or PC. Get your download on today.

Apple unveils iPhone 5, previews revamped iTunes & showcases new iPod family

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On Wednesday Apple unveiled the next-generation iPhone and it’s called the iPhone 5. They also used their stage time to discuss iTunes+iPod, showing off a redesigned iTunes Store for iOS, a simplified version of iTunes for desktop, and showcasing the next-generation iPod nano and touch. We begin with the top story…

iPhone 5

The iPhone 5 is a beautiful piece of hardware made entirely of glass and aluminum. It’s the thinnest and lightest iPhone to date, measuring at 7.6mm thin (that’s 18% thinner than the iPhone 4S) and weighing 112 grams (20% lighter than the 4S). Apple’s calling it “the world’s thinnest smartphone.” The screen has grown for the first time to 4-inches, boasting a Retina display with 326 pixels per inch and a resolution of 1136×640. The additional screen real estate allows for a fifth row of apps in the home screen, and all of Apple’s apps take advantage of it. Third party apps will see the letterbox effect, but developers can easily tweak their apps to also fill up the screen properly. The iPhone 5 also features 44% more color saturation than it’s predecessor and integrated touch sensors in the screen make it 30% thinner than before outputting a sharper image and less glare in sunlight.

The bigger screen is just the tip of the iceberg. The new iPhone packs ultrafast wireless with built-in GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+, DC-HSDPA, and, yes, LTE. In the U.S., LTE will be provided by Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. A single chip does voice and data; also inside is a single radio chip and a dynamic antenna. 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi is there as well.

The newly designed-by-Apple A6 chip features a CPU that’s 2x faster than before, with 2x faster graphics as well. The chip itself is 22% smaller than the previous A5 processor. Apple managed to make battery life better, too. It goes like this: 8 hours of 3G talk time, 3G browsing, and LTE browsing; 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing and video playback; 40 hours of music playback; and 225 hours of standby time.

Both the back-facing iSight camera and the front-facing FaceTime camera have been upgraded. The iSight cam features an 8 megapixel sensor (3264×2448) with backside illumination, hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, and fast f/2.4 aperture. The 25% smaller design also boasts a dynamic low light mode, spatial noise reduction, a smart filter for improved color matching, better low-light performance, and faster photo capture (40% faster than the 4S). 1080p HD video recording is still here with improved video stabilization, face detection, and the ability to take photos while recording video. The back-facing camera can also take panoramic shots now thanks to a simple enhancement in the Camera app in iOS 6. Moving to the front side, the FaceTime camera takes 1.2 megapixel photos, shoots 720p HD video, and features backside illumination, face detection, and FaceTime over cellular (with Verizon and Sprint only).

Audio is better with three built-in microphones located in the front, back, and bottom of the phone. The improved speaker design is 20% smaller than before and features a five magnet transducer, a noise-canceling earpiece, and wideband audio for better phone call performance.

Say goodbye to the nearly decade old 30-pin dock connector. Apple announced the new Lightning connector that is found in the iPhone 5. It’s 80% smaller than its predecessor, it’s all-digital with an 8-signal design and adaptive interface with improved durability and get this–it’s reversible, meaning you can plug it into the bottom of your device face up or down. Apple will sell a 30-pin to Lightning adapter for those who own accessories like sound docks that were strictly designed with the 30-pin connector in mind.

Apple spent time detailing the next version of their mobile OS, and you can read all about iOS 6 right here. It brings Apple-designed Maps, the new app Passbook, and enhancements to Notification Center, Safari, Mail, Photos, and Siri (among over 250 new features) to the iPhone and its brethren. It’s available as a free upgrade to iPhone 4S, 4, 3GS, 3rd-gen iPad, iPad 2, and 4th-gen iPod touch owners on September 19.

Now it’s time to talk pricing and availability. The iPhone 5 features a two-tone exterior and will come in two hues: black/slate and white/silver. It’s priced exactly like the 4S was: $199 (16GB), $299 (32GB), $399 (64GB). It’s available for preorder starting Friday, September 14 and ships one week later on September 21 in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A week after that it releases in 20 more countries, and by December it will ship in 100 countries with 240 carriers around the world. In other news, the iPhone 4 (8GB) is free and the iPhone 4S (16GB) is dropping to $99 effective immediately.


Continue reading Apple unveils iPhone 5, previews revamped iTunes & showcases new iPod family →

Adele tops iTunes’ best-selling albums and songs lists of 2011

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Apple has released lists of its music store’s best-selling albums and songs of 2011. 23-year-old singer songwriter Adele has comes out as the clear winner, topping both the best-selling album and song charts with her sophomore release 21 and the track “Rolling in the Deep,” respectively. Following 21 is Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV, Kanye West and Jay-Z’s collaborative effort Watch the Throne, and Coldplay’s latest Mylo Xyloto. Drake’s Take Care impressively took the #8 spot on the list, having only been released last month. Moving over to the best-selling songs, LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” landed at the #2 spot, followed by Katy Perry’s “Firework”, Bruno Mars’ “Grenade”, and Cee-Lo Green’s “Forget You.” This year Apple went so far as to award artists individual distinctions, too. For obvious reasons Adele was named Artist of the Year; Wasting Light by The Foo Fighters got Album of the Year, even though it didn’t land the in the best-selling top ten list; Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” is Song of the Year (#9 on the top ten list); and Breakthrough Artist of the Year is Nicki Minaj whose song “Super Bass” rests at #10 on the best-selling songs list. Jump after the break to see who else rounded out iTunes’ best-selling albums and songs of the year. Open iTunes to view their Rewind 2011 section for more year-end chart toppers.

[Via THR] Continue reading Adele tops iTunes’ best-selling albums and songs lists of 2011 →

Apple rolls out iTunes Match, makes syncing your music collection to iCloud a reality

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As of yesterday, iTunes Match has been made available for use for iTunes users and iOS device owners. For $24.99 a year, you can sync your entire music collection to Apple’s iCloud. Chances are your music library consists of music purchased from iTunes and music ripped from your personal collection of CDs. Apple will automatically match all your purchased songs from iTunes and they will become immediately available to listen to on a compatible device. As for your ripped music, Apple will also attempt to match them to their music servers and upload them that way. If they can’t, they will still be uploaded and made available for streaming at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality. Apple limits iTunes Match subscribers to 25,000 songs, but keep in mind that music purchased from the iTunes Store does not count towards that ceiling. To get started, make sure you have downloaded the new iTunes 10.5.1 update, the iOS 5 update, and set up iCloud on your iOS device (and Mac and/or PC).

[Via Apple]

Apple takes away TV rental option in iTunes

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Last week Apple removed the ability to rent TV shows in iTunes. Customers are now left with two options: buy an episode or subscribe to a Season Pass. Why the abrupt change, especially after Apple fought with the networks to drop renting prices to a low 99 cents almost one year ago? According to Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr, “iTunes customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows. iTunes in the Cloud lets customers download and watch their past TV purchases from their iOS devices, Apple TV, Mac or PC allowing them to enjoy their programming whenever and however they choose.” This sudden change in philosophy may be part of an even grander scheme; according to the WSJ the company may be “working on new technology to deliver video to televisions, and has been discussing whether to try to launch a subscription TV service.” Whatever’s going on, newly appointed CEO Tim Cook will eventually have to lay out the future of iTunes and when that happens everything will be made clear. For now, though, I’m finding it hard to take in this news; when I happened to miss an episode of a show, turning on my Apple TV and renting it for cheap was always my favorite way of catching up. There was never a need to purchase a show (for $2.99) and keep it; why bother? But now that’s the only way to do it.

[Via Engadget; AllThingsD; WSJ]

Beatles music sells like hotcakes on iTunes

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In mid-November, Apple Inc. and Apple Corps. put their differences aside and finally agreed to put the entire Beatles music collection onto iTunes, the #1 retailer of music.  Now that some time has passed, it’s time to take a look at the sales figures, and boy are they mighty impressive.  Let’s do some comparing.  During its very first week on iTunes, record company EMI reported that 2 million songs and 450,000 albums were sold.  And now about two months later, Apple says iTunes customers have purchased 5 million songs and 1 million albums in total.  For music that’s over 40 years old, these numbers are certainly staggering but expected; Beatles music rocks and now people have an easily accessible way to get their hands on it.  Can you guess what the most popular song and album is?  Well here’s your answer: “Here Comes the Sun” and Abbey Road, respectively.

[Via EW-MusicMix]

iTunes song previews extend to 90 seconds in length

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After many years of mediocre 30 second song previews, Apple now allows artists to upload 90 second previews.  Two restrictions apply: for the preview length increase the song must be 2 minutes and 30 seconds or longer, and lengthier previews only exist in the U.S. iTunes Store (for now).  The preview extension is very handy; purchasing decisions become easier when you have more time to demo a track.  Open up iTunes, head to the Store, and see if your favorite artists are embracing the positive change.

[Via AppleInsider; Engadget]