The annual iTunes Festival has turned into something of a beast since its modest launch with a small but powerful line-up at the ICA in 2007.
This year's festival at London's Roundhouse is giving away 60,000 tickets for gigs scattered throughout July - but an astonishing two million people have applied for them.
The iTunes Festival isn't a big money spinner in Apple terms; it's free, for starters. But this is a powerful marketing exercise for Apple, putting the virtual iTunes brand into the real world and reinforcing it with live artists. We also know how powerful live music and events are for driving music sales. I asked Apple for any figures on how influential the iTunes Festival is in that respect, but they couldn't comment.
The festival does generate exclusive content for the iTunes store, however - 60 tracks from the live recordings that go on sale in all 23 iTunes stores. A duet between Florence Welch and Dizzie Rascal at this year's Brit Awards in February was sold exclusively through iTunes five hours after the gig, and generated enough sales to push the track to number one.
Photo by tallkev on Flickr. Some rights reserved
This year's festival includes The XX, Ellie Goulding and Phoenix, along with Tony Bennett and Ozzy Osbourne. We can only hope that latter two decide to do a duet. (*Pretty please*)
What else is Apple brewing in the music space? Apple has already experimented with live music streaming to the iPhone in a low-profile Underworld gig last summer. That used Apple's HTTP streaming protocol, which is designed to make streamed content more reliable even with a patchy or busy network.
We'll probably see streamed gigs through iTunes too. And then there's the streamed music service, based on Apple's acquisition of Lala, widely expected to launch soon. That could blow Spotify out of the water.
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