28 April 2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store
On April 28, 2003 Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, selling songs for 99 cents each with the blessing of the major record labels. Music piracy was rampant and the labels were desperate. Apple sold about a million songs in the first week. The store made the iPod far more useful, gave Apple leverage over a whole industry, and was a template for the App Store.
The lesson: Making the legal option easier than the illegal one is often the best way to beat free.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Apple at the start of 2003 → $961,538 today, vs $7,727 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2003, the year it happened. That is 961.5 times the money, and $953,811 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Apple teaches: The best returns often come from companies that looked finished; Apple was a near-bankrupt also-ran in 1997, which is exactly why it was cheap.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $0.26 | $961,538 | $7,727 |
| 2005 | $1.15 | $217,391 | $5,763 |
| 2007 | $3.00 | $83,333 | $4,789 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Apple? Every starting year and the full story →
More Apple history
- 2 January 2019: Tim Cook writes a letter nobody wanted to read
- 9 January 2007: Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone
- 24 January 1984: The Macintosh goes on sale
- 27 January 2010: Apple unveils the iPad
- 1 April 1976: Apple is founded, and one co-founder cashes out early
- 11 April 1976: The Apple I goes on sale for $666.66
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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