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Apple Sells Two Million Songs in 16 Days
burgburgburg writes "According to Apple's latest press release, iTunes Music Store has sold over two million songs in the 16 days that it has been open. Quick calculations show this is around 1.44 songs per second. And as was the case last week, over half of the songs purchased so far were purchased as albums. Over 4,300 songs were added to the system yesterday, including older catalog stuff (Doors, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus), new albums (Cold, Lizz Wright, and Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs), prerelease tracks (Michelle Branch, Da Brat, Jesse Harris and Kenna) and more."
Is that there is no mechanism for indie bands and labels to get a piece of this action. This is a neat service, but it really only helps the big guys, while Apple has always been about the littleguy.
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Seriously, it would be cool if they got big enough as a content reseller to influence the DRM debate in favor of common sense.
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
Since the people downloading mp3s are only doing it for the convenience, not to save money.
Read: Apple has sold 2 million consumer friendly DRM enabled songs, with the big 5 on board and attracting new labels every day. Already the most successful online music distibutor ever, Apple has poised itself to be a major player for years to come in the emerging of the digital hub. In two years the ipod could have a big brother (or may just morph into) that downloads movies using the same basic format. A revenue stream like the ipod/music store combo is a god send and is probably keeping Apple afloat during this G4 debacle -
Oh and iTunes4, with cover art, an intergrated music store, my ipod interface, and streaming (and downloading) capabilities for my friends over the net, please show me the windows app that lets me do this out of the box with a great interface to boot. For 'free' on every mac.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
But this is only Mac users, which are (depending on who you believe) between 5 and 15% of the market. Extrapolate that out to where this is released for Windoze, and you see...
Reality has a liberal bias
The important point here really is that sales per average day have not diminished much since last week. 1 million in 7 days, 2 million in 16. This seems to indicate that the initial sales are not just a spike, they will be consistant. Eminem selling 7 million albums was a spike in both his own sales and in the sales of CDs in general.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
It ess time for zee apple money dance!
About time. Apple got a clue. Cheap singles, downloadable, mix and match. Just the formula that's been obvious for years now, just needed to be done on a big scale from a brand name outfit. Any of the big guys could have done this, software side, hardware side, music industry side. People asked them, they knew about it.
Just shows how many bad ideas can get investor money and interest, and how long a good idea can lay there begging to be picked up, even when millions of people are pointing at it, going "hey, look, a good idea!"
And just think the bigger push for better and cheaper broadband now, just from this one move, and it's a "legit" move, too, zero "controversy" about it or it's legality. It would be *nice* if it was cheaper than a dollar,and a scosh more flexible, but all in all it's a good start anyway.
WHAT! This is very impressive, 2 million songs that weren't bought befoe. $50 mil is hardly pocket change, that could buy Steve another jet. That's money that they didn't have before, that could have been downloaded from Kazaa. How many songs have the other downloadable music services sold? This is a Good Thing, as more labels and songs get added, and when this flips to Windows, just how many songs will be downloaded? My question is will the servers be able to scale enough once that happens?
Not to belittle the store (as I'm anxiously awaiting the Windows version) but you can't expect that these numbers will remain constant once the newness wears off.
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The first press release was that over 1 million sold in the first week. The second release was that over 2 million sold in 16 days. Using those numbers it would indicate that sales are slowing down, otherwise it should have been two million in 14 days.
Is this statistically accurate? No. My point is that two weeks is just WAY TOO SMALL a sample to determine the long term economic viability of this project.
I'd like to see it succeed, as I've felt the industry always needed something to replace the 45 single. Good luck to Apple, but to say "if they did this for a year" is one huge if
>Two million songs is not impressive at all.
Yes, for a company that has only 3% of computer marketshare, and an even smaller percent (85% ? of Mac users use OSX and lets imagine 90% downloaded Itunes 4) For a company that caters to this small of an audience, I would say two million songs in two weeks isn't bad. Macs have often been stepping stones before major software breaks out (I call it getting usability down, think AOL started on the Mac)
>This means total sales for the year would be >about $50 million, which in corporate terms is >pocket change.
It is pocket change. Now lets do some extrapolation of data shall we? 2 million songs in 16 days. Imagine if (when) this software is realeased for free on Windows, as it is currently under development. Lets say 90,000 downloads per day for mac users would extrapolate to be almost 3,000,000 for PC users, (thinking in strict terms of market share) so in two weeks time (after this software is set up for windows) we could see a revenue stream of over $1 Billion a year. Hardly chump change.
>Two million songs means that the average Apple >user is buying songs at a rate of 2-3 a year. >Hardly a figure that would impress anyone.
Are you Alomex, the great spreader of Fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD)? Or do you just wanna be a karma whore? The fact remains that the service has only been available for a little of two weeks, so each mac user downloaded two to three songs in two weeks. A song a week. (using your data)
>The only positive spin out of two million songs >sold is that it does prove that iTunes is not a >dud. Any other implication beyond that is pure >hype.
Positive Spin, in two weeks Apple has become the largest legit online music service company. And they can make money at this. They HAVE the backing of the music industry. They will soon have indy bands.
Please, take a moment to look at what the facts are before posting. I am getting annoyed with Karma whores spreading fake information about Microsoft, Apple, anything that doesn't run on or is Linux. The right tool for the right job.
Damn
Blah Blah Blah.
They need to have a system to tell users when songs are added. Several songs I want (Led Zep, latest Allman Bros etc) were not on the store when I checked. I would get them when they are available but I will not check every time I hear they added songs.
WTF does market capitalization have to do with the health of a company?! Will iTunes Music Store have an effect on AAPL's revenues and profits is the relevant question. You also failed to consider the ramifications of iTunes on Windows.
AAPL's 2002 revenues were $5,742 million. Net profits were $65 million.
So, $45 mil extra in revenues is indeed insignificant... about 0.7% of 2002 revs. Furthermore, they have to pay the music companies... Word is they will have to pay about 65% of the gross revenues to the music companies, leaving 35% for AAPL. So, without taking into account extra operating expenses, they can expect an extra $15 mil.
But numbers of Mac users pale in comparison to PC users. 5% vs 90%? iTunes is best-of-breed software.... I think it can capture quite a bit of the PC market for music downloads and playback. And Mac users are still downloading the iTunes 4 update! So I don't think a ten-fold increase in a year or two is that crazy!
10 * $45 mil = $450 mil extra in revenues
10 * $15 mil = $150 mil extra in profits
This is significant indeed.
Nah, it's not BS. MacOS before X just plain sucked for the kind of work he's trying to do. It sucked at copying files from place to place on the same disk. It really sucked at virtual memory. MacOS 9 multitasking was horrible. You could do one thing, and one thing only. This guy's got Netscape, BBEdit, file transfer, music playing, etc.. Something that OS 9 just can't do. Watch a DVD, and the DVD gets 100% of the freaking CPU, and yet the sound still loses sync. Nope, it won't drop a few frames here and there to let your background processes run.
Thankfully, MacOS X, with its new architecture based on open systems and open standards, is much, much better.
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