Apple Sells A Million Songs in Debut Week

Scrameustache writes "According to an Apple press release, the iTunes Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, and over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once. Those new iPods are selling like hotcakes too..."

Comments

Re:Hooray

[bludstone]

Unfortunatly, these sales trends wont continue unless Apple can get more music contracts. No torpedo-ing will happen unless this occurs...

Even then, does Apple's model adequatly compensate the artist? Does it allow entry for independant artists? Does it even have the potential to work against the RIAA, or will it simply strengthen its grip?

About what I thought

[Agarwaen The Tired]

Most people aren't thieves. The merely want their content delivered the way they want it. It should be simple for a company to offer a better downloading experience then a decentralized p2p. I'd be willing to pay if the offer me more value then p2p programs. By that I mean easier searchs, high quality files, ability to find related music, and better availibility. RIAA has really been doing nothing but shooting itself it's foot and watching it bleed.

Re:About what I thought

[TMB]

Really, where do you guys do your CD shopping? The last time I paid $20 for a CD it was a double CD. Have you ever been to Best Buy? The new hit albums are $13.99, and the older stuff rarely is more than $15.99.

Great, but do they have the Proyecto Mirage CD I've been looking for? How about Synthetik's ADSR? The first Feindflug album? Weena Morloch's KadaverKomplex? Anything by Insurge?

Thanks to economies of scale, the price of CDs are inversely proportional to demand. Which is fine if other people happen to like the music you do, but sucks if they don't.

[TMB]

they'd have sold a LOT more

[RalfM]

If they weren't restricting to credit cards with a US billing address. Like VISA isn't the same globally?

Ralf

Re:they'd have sold a LOT more

[hafree]

If they weren't restricting to credit cards with a US billing address. Like VISA isn't the same globally?

The problem is fraud prevention. Who's to say you couldn't go on a shopping spree and accumulate 1000 new songs overnight with someone else's credit card? As can be seen from the current RIAA vs. Verizon case, the ISP won't likely help identify the thief in a civil suit, and most credit card companies could care less about fraud prevention in a criminal suit so long as they get their money. And that's just in the US - credit card fraud overseas is much more difficult to trace and prosecute. For now, it's probably just a case of cover-your-ass...

Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too

[DeRobeHer]

For some reason, I don't think the holdup for getting music into the iTunes Music Store is the digitizing part. It's probably the legal wrangling with the companies that actually own the music.

Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too

[Huogo]

I highly doubt that they have problems ripping things at decent speed, its a problem of getting the music labels to allow them to put the songs up. This is still a new technology, and I would think that the labels are still uneasy about allowing their music go to up in this format.

Why did it work?

[ArsSineArtificio]

How much of this success is due to this being a truly significant advance in implementations versus Apple simply having a heavy presence in the market?

The secret is in the direct tie to iTunes. It's difficult to overstate how convenient it is to be able to shop for music within your music player as opposed to fiddling with some web-based download service.

This is the kind of thing which Apple's control over hardware, software, and consumer applications together permits it to excel at. What is astonishing is that Microsoft has proved so poor at this kind of coordination.

ASA

Re:Why did it work?

[lunenburg]

You make it sound like Apple is just bursting with posies in its niceness. I've yet to meet any credible people who believe that given half the chance Apple wouldn't have turned out just like Microsoft, or even worse. You only have to look at their history of using lawyers as weapons to suddenly start appreciating the lack of lawsuit-happiness over at Redmond.

The simple fact of the matter is that most Slashdot posters wouldn't know consistancy of opinion if it slapped them round the face with a wet kipper. It's fashionable to like Apple, it's fashionable to dislike Microsoft. The fact that they are just two sides of the same coin is something most would apparently rather ignore.

Reading for comprehension can be fun, in six quick and easy steps!

If you'll go back and actually read what I wrote before the Redmond side of your brain kicked into overdrive, you'll see that I made no judgements one way or the other of the relative "niceness" of either company, or as to what Apple would do if they had 90% of the marketshare in home PCs.

So, just for you, I'll hit the salient points again:

1) Microsoft has been convicted of having an illegal monopoly in the PC market, and using that monopoly to crush competition in that and other markets. Apple has about 5% marketshare, and thus isn't going to be able to use iTunes to bully anyone but themselves into releasing Mac-exclusive products.

2) Microsoft has the power to use an integrated music service to dictate the future of digital music provided over the internet. Apple, as a niche player, does not.

3) It's logical to be concerned with potential anticompetitive results from pretty much anything Microsoft does, based on their market share, market power, and past history. It's not logical to be concerned with anticompetitive results from Apple, as they don't have anywhere near enough power to influence competitors or control a market.

Re:Was I misled?

[johnpaul191]

There are DRM protections on the songs, but the Apple version is more laid back than anyone elses.... off the top of my head you can upload the songs to an unlimited number of iPods, 3 computers AT A TIME (you can switch that too), you can burn unlimited audio CDs "for personal use". Burning to audio CD strips off the DRM.

if you only have the songs on one machine and the machine burned up... i don't know how that works out. I guess like anything else you just have to back it up. It might not sound ideal, but if somebody breaks into your car and steals your CDs (or your house burns down) i don't think Old Man Geffen will ship you replacements for free.

Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free..

[Alan Partridge]

I think it might be closer to: somebody has possibly finally figured out that making products and services AVAILABLE to people who are proven to actually have the means and the inclination to ACTUALLY PAY FOR STUFF that they find valuable. Windows users buy their machines on price first, features second (and steal half their software from work third...), Linux users have moral objections to paying for stuff that's already been sold a million times, whereas Apple users understand that time pretty much equals money and would rather pay to take the hassle out of life and get on with the rest of theirs.

Visa would be quite happy

[goldcd]

but I suspect it's due to licensing arrangements. Often the same artist is represented by different labels in different territories - he might have been signed in the UK by a small Indie, but needs big-muscle distribution to break the states etc. Big distributer sells in the US, indie still sells in UK.
This causes problems online though as customers and territories are now now no longer tied together - you could buy from whichever territory offered the cheapest identical product. One big free market.....nope, couldn't have that, could we? so that's why you need a US Visa.

API

[jfedor]

They should expose their store through XML-RPC or SOAP, so that I can write my own iTunes. The money would still go to them.

(Never gonna happen, I know.)

-jfedor

Re:3. Profit?

[binaryDigit]

I'm still not sure how this service is going to make a lot of money.

Well obviously $30mil in profit is nothing to sneeze at. Plus for Apple we're talking about an adjunct to their primary business. I know some others are talking about "replacing" the current model, but Apple would be more than happy to have a reliable $30mil coming in every year.

But one aspect you're missing is, how many more ipods are being sold because of this? How many more Mac "switchers"/converts are being created now? This is just another way for Apple to create market share for themselves by adding value to computers, taking them beyond just generic tools and making them useful for more people (other than surfing of course). Plus, it gets them in bed with the entertainment industry even more. With Steve's association with Pixar and therefore Disney, the next obvious step would be some type of video distribution. I'm not talking general purpose VOD, nope, I'm talking things like kids shows and cartoons, where the demand for high resolutions (and therefore bandwidth) isn't nearly as much as more adult fare.

So overall you can't look at this as a thing upon itself. It is merely part of the bigger picture that Apple to drawing to keep itself significant in the market. Kudos to them.

What Am I Missing?

[RobotRunAmok]

People wanted to be able to download a wide variety of "good" music, load it onto an MP3 player and burn their own CD from their purchase. By all accounts (except perhaps those of some vocal sixteen year olds who think the world owes them a record collection) Apple has delivered this, They did the research, developed the tech, made the difficult deals, took the risks, generated the buzz, and now I hope they profit handsomely from it.

The RIAA reps the companies that get the music into the download -- engineers, producers, designers, and, yes, lawyers -- all of whom need to be paid, and will get their slice. The size of that slice is spelled out in a contract which both parties sign. Is the size of that slice "fair?" I dunno. What percentage of the price of that soda finds its way back to the chemists and bottlers? How many pennies on the cigar dollar get back to the guy rolling the leaves? How many nickels on the Big Mac pricetag work their way back to the cattlerancher? Do we stop consuming these products (and a million others) until we "ger answers?"

Say I'm a small-town chemist who just developed a new flavor -- how do I get my soda bottled and onto the shelves at the 7-11? You mean -- it's not easy?? I can't just pull my truck up to the back of ths store and stock the shelves myself? I have to make a [shudder] DEAL?! Oh, the Injustice!

Is this new venture going to change the world, overthrow evil, and bring about a Glorious Workers' Revolution? No, silly, it's gonna let you download music easily and legally onto your computers and disks. No more or less than it was designed to do.

I've never had a use for Apple, Macs, or Steve Jobs, but my hat is off to them on this.

Re:What Am I Missing?

[theWrkncacnter]

Good call.

This isn't going to hurt the RIAA and bring their downfall. Its going to allow the RIAA to shift their focus by providing a testbed for buying music online in this manner, and its going to show them that it works. In effect, this is only molding the RIAA into something that we all might be able to deal with. But hell, if I can buy my music in this way for all the time to come, I really could care less if the RIAA has a hand in it.

Re:What Am I Missing?

[RobotRunAmok]

Dude, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there a bunch of websites onto which an artist can upload his music and do business with consumers more or less directly?

As far as I know, there's always been that option for the local band. The point here is that most bands, local and otherwise, would rather spend their time focusing on making music, and so make arrangements for other organizations to handle their distribution for them. These distribution organizations have traditionally shied away from online distribution -- until now, and that's a Big Deal.

It's highly likely that artists not signed by any of the companies represented in the RIAA will eventually make their way onto an iTune download. I don't think that heralds the death knell for Big Music any more than the combination of Amazon.com and small-press publishers presaged a demise for the major publishing houses.

Humans have demonstrated a remarkable propensity to consume, and, oddly enough, are proving more than willing to compensate those involved in both the creation and distribution of the consumables.

Re:Finally

[joshsisk]

The worst of all this is why are people stupid enough to pay for music.

Maybe because people over the age of 16 understand that it takes work, time and money to make music, and would be happy to pay a fair price for a product delivered in a manner that they like?

Re:AAC questions

[nsayer]

1. Yes, the user-id appears in the file
2. It would be pointless to put the AAC file up on Kazaa because no one else can play it.
3. You could use iMovie to export an AIFF of the audio, then re-encode it to DRM-less AAC or MP3 if you like, and then upload it to Kazaa, but that would be indistinguishable from someone who bought the CD, ripped a track, and then did the same thing.

Here's the deal...

[YllabianBitPipe]

There are three types of people posting on this thread.

1: The cheap bastards who at no price except for free, will music be cheap enough. These people are impossible to satisfy with a realistic business model.

2: The vast majority, who just care about price. DRM is acceptable as long as it's wussy and if the price is cheap enough, who cares. A little bit of inconvenience due to DRM is no big deal if the price is low enough (and mind you, the DRM on these AAC files is pretty wussy).

3: A loud minority for whom a purchase from the iTunes store is a political one, that feel supporting any DRM is supporting the powers that be, the music industry, the RIAA, etc. These are the types of people for whom any purchase can be a political statement. The types of people who berate you for shopping at WalMart or eating a hamburger because it supports the corrupt meat-packing industry. They have a point, but they are in the minority ... most people don't sit and go through a checklist trying to figure out which product is doing the most harm to which people before they go out to the grocery store and shop.

The money is at #2. #1 will never be satisfied and #3 will never shut up. Go get the money, Apple.

And wait till the Windows version comes out.

[webslacker]

Very few people have mentioned this, and I think it bears notice.

The sales so far only represent Mac owners in the United States.

How much larger is the Windows user base? We're going to have a Windows version later this year.

How much larger is the international market? Apple's going to start taking International sales soon.

On top of that, Fortune magazine reports that Apple is in talks with AOL to have iTunes be the official music player/music store of America Online. How many more sales will that be?

We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, folks.