ABSTRACT
Between 2003 and 2012, the Apple-based iTunes digital store was the largest corporate retailer of recorded music in the United States. Underneath the sleekness of the Apple brand contained an intricate web of corporate power, extreme market concentration, and various monopoly policies and practices that ensured dominance and control of the music industry. I examine how vertical integration, primarily through the manufacture of hardware such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTouch, and various computers, fostered market dominance in alliance with the iTunes store – all of which ushered in the cultural and economic shift away from tangible recorded music to paid-for digital files. This chapter also addresses other various factors that reinforced Apple’s monopoly status such as barriers to entry for competition, collusion with the major record labels, digital licensing strategies, product synergies, exclusive only offers, pricing schemes, digital rights management and media control, privacy issues, and exploited labor in terms of the manufacture of Apple hardware. Apple actively exploited these methods to monopolize and ultimately reshape the music industry during this epoch of time.
