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After selling over 4 billion tracks on iTunes, is the operation profitable on its own? For a long time, Apple was known to make its money mainly from their technology like iPods, iPhones, computers, etc and they were not making a profit from the $.99 downloads. But new research has shown that iTunes is profitable on an operating basis. It is tough to calculate because their fixed costs are continuing to amortize as a result of less money spent on the technological infrastructure it built to open up the business, but iTunes spends a great deal on marketing and advertising compared to like businesses such as Amazon. iTunes is estimated to be making a profit of around $390 million.