Apple's iTunes Store Shut Down By Massive Service Outage

A DNS error could be costing Apple millions in lost iTunes sales. Update: It's back up after 11 hours.

An internal DNS error caused a massive iTunes Store service disruption Wednesday, knocking Apple's App Store, Mac App Store and iBooks Store offline for more than eight hours. The outage continues as of this writing.

Apple's iTunes store out of commission across the board for 6 hours : media, apps and books. https://t.co/z3avEFB08D

"We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this morning," Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr told BuzzFeed News. "The cause was an internal DNS error at Apple. We're working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience."

Though the outage left other services like Apple Pay unscathed, it is no doubt having some effect on one of Apple's major cash cow: apps. The iTunes store generated $2.6 billion in net sales in the last three months of 2014. Based on that number, an eight-hour outage would imply about $9.28 million in lost sales.

Apple brought its iTunes Store back online today at approximately 1:15 PT. All told, it was down for about 11 hours.

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