The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, it has been the largest music vendor in the United States since April 2008, and the most popular music vendor in the world since February 24, 2010. It now offers over 28 million songs, videos and apps. The iTunes Store's revenues in the first quarter of 2011 alone totalled nearly US$1.4 billion; by October 4, 2011, the store had sold 16 billion songs.

While most downloaded files initially included restrictions on their use, enforced by FairPlay, Apple's implementation of digital rights management, iTunes later initiated a shift into selling DRM-free music in most countries, marketed as iTunes Plus. On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM had been removed from 80% of the entire music catalog in the U.S. Full iTunes Plus availability was achieved on April 7, 2009 in the U.S., coinciding with the introduction of a three-tiered pricing model; however, television episodes, many books, and films are still FairPlay-protected. As of May 2012, the iTunes Store serves over 315 million mobile devices, including iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.