Slashdot Mirror
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.
best web host ever
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.
Which would probably be bad. If apple owns a share in any of these labels, others may be reluctant to allow their songs to be sold through the service.
Apple is dependent upon the whole music industry cooperating with them.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
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.
.
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.