That's not really relevant to the question asked there: You don't need to own an Apple product to buy music trough iTunes.

If you wanted just that one song then iTunes was very much the most affordable, and accessible, way to legally buy digital music back then because it only charged you $1 for a song.

The only other alternatives where, often legally rather obscure, flatrate subscription models or buying the physical full album, which would usually have cost you at least $20+

Valve did something very similar with Steam: Very easy to use and it actually passed on the savings from digital distribution to the consumers by heavily discounting the prices of games.

> That's not really relevant to the question asked there: You don't need to own an Apple product to buy music trough iTunes.

I wasn't aware that iTunes offered downloads via a website back then, because iTunes certainly does not run on the OS which the people that I'm thinking of used at the time (and still doesn't).

Yep exactly! I personally don't find Apple products useful but man I love iTunes just because I can buy DRM-free music.

I wish buying movies was this easy.

I tried iTunes on Windows once. Horrendously clunky UI, not at all what one would have expected from the vaunted "intuitive" Apple.