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Apple Announces 25 Million Song Downloads
Tweder writes "On Apple's iTunes site, Apple has announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 25 Million songs from the iTunes Music Store. It seems the launch of the ITMS on the Windows platform has boosted sales tremendously." I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?" So, there you go.
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals, when the pirates will simply continue to use uncrippled formats?
25M sales is great for Apple; bad for music lovers. The fact that a million people or so have jumped on this new thing does not mean it's the future of music.
Total music sales will continue to slump, and piracy will continue to run rampant until the industry offers a legal alternative which is free of DRM and hardware/software lock-in. eMusic was a nice try - next time give it a shot with popular bands - they're all on Kazaa anyway, so what do you have to lose?
Pudge, I've got several Macs. I use iTunes. I just bought an album off there about an hour ago. But let's not kid ourselves. So, there's been 25 million downloads off iTMS in the past, what nine months? There's probably been 2.5 billion downloads off kazaa in that time. Orders of magnitude, dude. Orders of magnitude.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Chump change in the pockets of a multi-billion dollar industry. Besides, they'll somehow make it sound as if they actually lost money on this...
What's your point? A lot of shit wouldn't exist if it wasn't for something else. MP3.com wasn't going to work either, remember?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
It was the subscription model that was doomed. iTunes works inarguably. Subscription services may have been decent theories, but I think we just saw their end, and know who was right all along.
Um, yeah. In case you didn't get that, the winner is Jobs.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
This is Slashdot. You don't need to put a slant on a story. No matter how unbiased the submission is, rest assured that we'll find a way to turn it into a Microsoft conspiracy of some sort.
Yah, 25 million songs is VERY good, which works out to be about 2.5 million albums, but is Apple making any profit yet? My understanding was that Itunes was designed to sell Ipods and is making very, very, little profit due to all of the fees it has to pay to the RIAA and the owners, etc.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Apple does a nice job marketing. 25 million downloads is not alot of downloads at all. Kazaa gets that many downloads in a few days. The flaw with the Itunes model? No one knows how much money actually goes to artists. Its legal but most people using Kazaa don't give a shit about the law. So you have a situation where someone like me who currently boycotts the RIAA has no intention of ever supporting Itunes simply because Itunes hurts artists. Artists don't make a penny. Customers get robbed paying $1 for a low quality audio rip. You don't see that you are still paying the RIAA $1? I support Magnatunes, I supported Mp3.com, I even support Emusic. I'll never support Itunes, I will never pay for music on a per song basis unless at least 50% of my money goes to musicians. I will not pay $1 a song, songs should be priced by the market and not buy record execs. If you want to continue to pay content owners, go ahead and waste your money. If you want to save the music industry and help the artists and yourself Itunes is not the answer. Here are some alternatives Magnatunes Weed The Itunes business model will never be mainstream. When TV was invented, pay TV was not the mainstream and while cable did make money, most people had reguar TV.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'd like to see this succeed as the next person but...
Apple is probably the largest seller of online music and 25 million doesn't sound like a lot compared to the billions that other formats like CD's make (sure they cost more to sell but the actual physical medium is worth a lot less then the $13+ amount they are sold for).
Note that I'm not discounting the ability of Apple to increase but this news story was not as amazing as the editorial seems to suggest. We all knew apple was doing well but so far $25 mil (25 million songs * 99cents) is not big in it self.
Hmmm... Pie...
I always bought music because I liked it and wanted to be able to listen to it when I wanted to, over and over again, not to support the RIAA.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
s. For a $0.99 song apple gets $0.30 to cover bandwitdh and server charges, about $0.65 goes to the labels and $0.05 goes to the artists. Of course the last two things vary depending on the contracts signed for each artist.
Where do you get these figures? From what I've heard Apple doesnt make a penny. Artist's dont make a penny. Just the RIAA.
show me where on the Apple site this is stated, show some proof.
The more money labels make from the selling of music online, the more money they will be able to kick back to the artists in the end as new contracts are written up. Until the labels see big changes in the cash flow, things will stay the same.
Yeah but why would they kick anything back to artists? This is like saying "If we buy more music from the RIAA the prices of CDs will go down"
When has any of this ever been true?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
That model hasn't worked. They're hardly making anything off iTunes.
It's all of the iPods Apple is selling as a result that is what's making it work for them.
Arguing that the model isn't working because Apple isn't making any money off iTunes is like arguing that the DVD model isn't working because Best Buy isn't making anything off DVD sales (which may be true considering how much they discount).
Guess what? The model works. In the latter case, Best Buy makes money because as long as you're in the store to buy the $9.99 DVD on sale, you pick up some blank CDs, a new pair of headphones, a monster cable, or something else with much higher markup. But the movie company still makes plenty of money off the DVD. Everybody wins.
Same with iTunes. The model works. Apple attracts customers with the music store, and makes a profit by selling iPods. They don't lose money on everyone else, they just don't make a lot of profit. But the recording companies and artists make plenty of money. And remember, they're not all evil - just the RIAA. Apple has hundreds of thousands of songs from non-RIAA labels now.
The RIAA may be doomed, but legal online music downloading is here to stay.
The success of ITMS is that it shows that Jobs understands two things the RIAA does not: microeconomics and marketing. Think about it: iTunes Music Service isn't competing with the PressPlay, Napster 2, Real, or any of the other turkeys who assumed that people would simply want to buy their unfriendly, ad-crippled, bloated services out of a sense of duty, or just because they were feeling guilty.
No, I believe Apple intended all along to compete with a different class of "competitor:" Kazaa, LimeWire, AIMster and the others. Apple, in essence, pretended it was competing in a commoditized market, by which I mean a market in which the price of goods are in free-fall (or in this case, actually free). How does one compete in a commoditized market? By differentiating the brand with things the other commodity players can't provide: quality ("CD-quality" tracks), convenience (reliable, near-instant downloads), ease-of-use (easy searching and browsing), and bundling (integration with iTunes). This is something the other (albeit "illegal") competitors cannot match.
Folks can -- and undoubtedly will -- argue until the cows come home about whether ITMS is simply perpetuating the RIAA's cartel. (I personally feel that the RIAA's destruction is as pre-ordained as the setting sun, but that's a thread for another discussion). But you have to give Jobs credit for outside-the-box thinking, and for a willingness to take on an unconventional class of competitor.
"Unfortunately what the industry will probably say is "Look using the RIAA to sue everyone because we don't know how to adjust our business model, has really paid off!"
They have adjusted their business model. For example, they've embraced online distribution through sites like iTMS, and it's paid off very well. The record companies are learning that online distribution can work. If by adjusting the business model you mean to stop asking that people pay for music, that is not going to happen.
A friend who works for one of the legitimate download services (not iTMS) states that they are thrilled with the lawsuits. The theory goes that the lawsuits will scare people away from pirating their music, at which point they'll either buy CDs the old-fashioned way, or try one of the legitimate online services. They don't need to stop all piracy; just enough to give the online distribution market the velocity it needs. The RIAA and the download services have a symbiotic relationship here.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Because RIAA music is what 98.5% of listeners want to hear. Why not offer everything and anything and let the consumer choose? Independent labels can compete just fine with or without the RIAA on iTunes.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Right now, iTMS is building marketshare and mindshare, and then I mean primarily by the total market (online music sales) increasing. They have a cash cow (iPod) that's already benefitting from it. Long term, they can start pushing for higher margins, since bands would *want* to get on iTMS, particularly smaller bands.
iTMS is kinda like where amazon.com was, building itself up. The difference is, iTMS is going at near zero and is feeding the iPod cashcow, amazon.com was burning VC money faster than lightning. iTunes is even a migration app - get people to use that, and there's one app less they'll miss if going to a Mac.
Overall, you should rather ask yourself if anybody else can make money on it without relying on stuff like the iPod - if not, iTMS can keep the prices so low they that competitors won't enter the market, and yet high enough to make a nice profit. Right now the competition is big, and so the prices are slashed as low as they can go. iTMS will keep it there until they've established themselves as *the* place to go for music online, or maybe *the* place overall.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There is a difference between making no profit and making a loss. Real investors don't care if a product doesn't make much money as long as it pays for itself completely. Why? Because if a product does such AND continues to grow in volume the revenue and overall value of the company increases. In this case 25million songs is akin to selling over 8k more top of line powermacs. That revenue is a good thing even if it isn't profit. More importantly even if only every 10k songs results in an iPod sale then Apple still clears an additional 2500 ipods sold. If apple is clearing an average of $150 per iPod (wouldnt be suprised with their crazy margins) then thats over 375k in EXTRA iPods sold. And what if every 100 iPods ends up resulting in a Mac... see it goes on and on.
The point is not making a profit isn't a bad thing if it increases positive mindshare and overall company value, which this is obviously doing.
--- I do not moderate.
You might have heard that in some countries (Canada and Spain come to mind, I'm sure they're not the only ones) the big record labels have put a levy on blank media because of supposed losses over piracy. They no longer bitch about it because, want it or not, they're already getting your money without your knowledge.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
I'm sorry if that offends you. I know I should just leave the car open, because anything else is simply assuming that all the people walking the streets are criminals.
I guess I'm just disrespectfull of my fellow man.
The only way independent labels can compete is with the RIAA's off the service
this can't be right. when you're on a service like that where you can pick and choose tunes, marketing dollars etc ought to be LESS powerful and it becomes a more even playing field for the independent labels? it doesnt take me any longer to click a link to a non-RIAA label song to one that is.
--
Then get informed.
Stop expecting Apple to jeopardize business relationships solely so that you can continue to be an ignorant shopper.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but if the entire reason the iTMS exists and is commercially viable is because of the RIAA, what motivation is there for Apple feature a seach option that alows you to exclude publishing members of the RIAA from a music search?
With the consolidation going on in the music industry right now, I'd think a bright, web-using person like you could search for music then figure out whether it's published by members of a group you want to support.
And all I wanted was my gap clothing, not to support slavery in africa by buying it. And I wanted to sit at home and eat steak without dealing with putting antibiotics and growth hormones into my body. I wanted to eat my steak rare but feedlots breed so much medicine resistant disease that by eating feedlot steak rare I risk catching a bug that can't be cured. I want to drink root beer without worrying about wigging out on my family becuase my head is so full of MSG that I get so irritated by their breathing I want to kill them, the same goes for about 60% of the food at the stores. I'd like to use the microwave to warm a cup of hot cocoa in the morning, but I don't want to take in carcinogens that'll make me get cancer. I'd like to goto the doctor for treatment of a bad flu and not be told to take antibiotics that don't work and make it worse, becuase the doctor thinks they are a miracle cure, but he can't tell me about the real cure; Vitamins, minerals, aromatheripy, rest, hot fluid, fruits, veggies, and time.
It boils down to this; we're all sluts to convienence. I chose not to use these conviences because I'd rather live healthily and be able to do what I want to do than live a drugged, unnatural, unhealthy and ultamatly controlled existance. I like some of the music the RIAA puts out, but because I'm supporting terrorism by buying it, I refuse to buy any of it. Money is power, and while we shouldn't have to worry about someone acquiring so much that they can break the law and do as they please. I shouldn't have to think about what the person I'm buying from is going to do with the money in our society, but unfortunatly you've got to or else things can get real ugly real fast.
So, you've got some choices. Do you buy from the RIAA and support terrorism? Do you buy from indie bands and support them? Do you go onto a p2p app and do whatever the hell you want and risk economic extortion at the hands of the RIAA or do you say "fsck it" and never listen to music again?
And for those of you who think my using the term terrorism is wrong, think again. The RIAA is a cartel who's entire economic basis for survival is extortion of it's customers in one form or another. Sure you say, it's just music. But that isn't the whole truth. It's most of the music in all of the stores and on all the radio's. Combined with Bertlsman, Disney, News Corp, AOL time warner, and the 2 others I can't remember, and you have an effective media monopoly. Views that the big wigs don't like get censored from all media, and americans become as unsuspecting as hindu cows and as blind to the fact that what they do is actually killing people in other countries and the information they are getting is designed to manipulate them. I consider that terrorism, not on par with 9/11 or the some of the slaughters that go on in africa, or what the chinese do to their people, but it is still terrorism and it's still wrong.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
All great art is made by starving artists? What a load of pompous crap. Michelangelo wasn't starving. In fact, he died rich. His work was very well subsidized. As was Leonardo Di Vinci's. The Beatles seem to have made pretty good work after they had some money in their pockets. As did Bob Dylan. Your opinions about what an artist should or shouldn't be are just that--opinions. And I think it's a fairly safe assumption that no artist would care one whit about what you think. Furthermore, given the choice, I would wager that almost all artists would rather get paid than starve. But hey, if it makes you feel better to come up with stupid rationalizations for why you don't want to pay for music, knock yourself out!
Because RIAA music is what 98.5% of listeners want to hear.
No - because the RIAA makes it impossible (via Payola and monopoly) for any non-RIAA band to be widely heard. There are plenty of great bands out there that won't make it big until they sell out to the RIAA for pennies on the dollar.
iTunes and the like are getting us one step closer to circumventing the RIAA altogether. We only need one smart geek DJ at this point and the whole thing will get blown apart. My idea is as follows:
- Set up massive P2P network of FCC-legal low-power broadcast stations (i.e. - garage, cable modem and some unsigned bands)
- Distribute media through internet and synchronize broadcast thereof - every node broadcasts the same song at the same time with allowance for DJs to input their local color (they just have to watch the clock so that they know when the next song will come on)
- Create an open system providing for anyone to participate
- Voila, profit
You could distribute the media on DVD for those rural areas without broadband access. You'd simply need a good model of synchronizing everything. I got the idea when a local high school started their own radio station. It was at this point that I realized that EVERY other station MUST be taking money for air time because this new station was just so refreshing. I mean, they were playing R&B followed by classic rock followed by obscure alternative (unsigned stuff). It was all great and I hadn't heard much of it in a while, if at all. The kids just play what they like, instead of what Clearchannel likes.
Amazing...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Look, you may not like the RIAA, but please don't use the word terrorism where its not appropriate. We need a very strong word to describe 9/11 and some of the slaughters that go on in africa. Inappropriate use of the word devalues it's power.
TERRORISM - n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
the definition you quoted perfectly states the case for why the RIAA's actions could be considered terrorism, specifically, by the very groups (victims even) the RIAA terrorizes.
and since we're picking definitions most expedient to our argument:
TERRORIZE - v 1: coerce by violence or with threats 2: fill with terror; frighten greatly - www.dictionary.com
sounds like the actions of a terrorist to me. september 11th should change our mindsets but not our language. by engaging in the act of terrorizing individuals, no matter who they are, the RIAA is by definition a terrorist. the original poster did not use this word "inappropriately."
"I DARE you to make less sense!"
I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?"
And you would be assuming that the people who are paying for iTunes songs are people who would otherwise have downloaded the songs for free. I've seen no evidence that shows this. For all we know, the people buying iTunes songs are completely the same group of people who would also buy the CDs. Personally, I doubt that iTunes has had much of an impact at all on pirated music. Those who download for free already have no problem with downloading music for free, so why would they change and start paying?
Also, don't forget that iTunes is not supposed to make money in and of itself. It's meant to sell iPods. Jobs has already stated many times that iTunes is not supposed to (and won't) make money, at least for Apple.
Given how popular iTunes is, at this point in time if you were an artist looking to sign a deal it seems like it would be very smart to look for the label that gave you the best deal for songs distributed online - which would be independant labels. If good artists make this choice, then fewer people will buy RIAA stuff - and that's how they will finally fall, if at all. It's all about an artist going for a more limited sucess in music but possibly ending up a lot better because the cut is better, so they could make more money on fewer sales.
In short, it all comes down to how logical musicians are and will be... or how many major sucesses from independant labels will draw others that way.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wish Slashdot would stop setting up the recording industry with these straw men arguments. I don't think the recording industry ever thought (or said) that it would never sell mp3s online. It said that it was unrealistic to sell mp3s online if they could be easily pirated by anyone the next day. And you know what? They were right.
My interest in using iTMS is very high now - the only reason I don't use any of the online music stores is because I don't want to be locked into one store/one mp3 player (software)/one mp3 player (hardware). But once a standard is defined, I'll be there to buy.
But I wouldn't use iTMS, or any music store, if the old Napster were still around, or if Kazaa were any good for finding the music I am interested in. Back when Napster was king, I could find any song I wanted for free. As a result, I didn't buy a CD for a couple years (file sharing over the college network helped too). Now Napster is gone, and Kazaa has a ton of phony files that have made it a hassle to use. As a result, I'm willing to pay so that I don't have to waste a lot of time finding the free version on Kazaa - since time, after all, is money.
My friends who can still find what they want on Kazaa have no interest in using music stores. Those who can't, do.
I'm not saying it's all or nothing. There are some users who always would have paid for their music, and some who never will. But there are also a HUGE number of users - and they're not just computer geeks, remember Newsweek had a cover story on Napster - who will pirate the music if it's easy, and pay for it it's hard to pirate.
It used to be really, really freaking easy to pirate music. Let's stop pretending that the music industry was saying that it would never sell mp3s online. It was saying it wouldn't sell mp3s online as long as doing so just made it incredibly easy to pirate them.
This is DRM that's so easy to defeat you can't call it a respectable hack.
It's important that you not refer to the process of burning CD's from iTunes tracks as "defeating" DRM. That's like saying using your key to your own house "defeats" the lock.
The DRM system that Apple came up with is called FairPlay. (They don't use that term much in their marketing, but that's what it's called.) FairPlay was designed, from the beginning, to allow customers to burn Red Book-compliant audio CD's from downloaded music. That's because the vast majority of people in iTunes's target market still listen to music on CD. Not MP3-CD, not DRM-encoded-CD, just plain CD. So FairPlay was built from the ground up with a clearly defined download-to-CD path in it.
When you download tracks from iTunes and burn them to CD, you're not defeating the DRM. You're working within it. You're doing something that the DRM system expressly allows you to do.
Talking of it in terms of "defeating" casts the conversation in the wrong context entirely. Don't do that.
Has the RIAA threatened to kill you or your familiy?
Try ousting them from their seats of power and see how quickly you might find out that they WILL do this.
It reminds me of a story a couple months back I saw about creating synthetic diamonds that were virtually identical to diamonds found in the earth, and on top of it were far cheaper. I remember remarking to my father at lunch one day that the person who had invented that technology had better watch his back, because he might find himself with a bullet in it if he wasn't wary of the diamon cartels.
The RIAA is just another cartel, and its actions are just as violent, if not in actuality then in principle. It will downright bury anything it doesn't want around, and we all know it can do it. They avoid being called a monopoly because they don't take a direct approach to media ownership, but in truth it's all a front and we know it.
Like any other unionized organization, it doesn't represent its members--it represents itself, and its number one interest isn't that of its members, but rather of the RIAA itself. The sooner we can get rid of that, the more likely it is that true capitalism will start working for the consumers and the sellers.
Idealistic, I know, but it IS possible.
perhaps i should have cited this definition as well:
terrorize - To coerce by intimidation or fear. - dictionary.com
do you deny the RIAA's multiple frivoulous lawsuits are a legal form of coercion? are the defendants not intimidated into settling rather than continuing with a lengthy, costly court battle? it's still terrorism, just a different medium.
"I DARE you to make less sense!"
Your argument doesn't hold, at least not directly. To get the most "bang for their buck", they'd be looking at ratings, not predictability. Indirectly, it might be that ratings are maximized by playing predictable Top 40 music, but that is what the parent post was talking about -- music consultants and focus groups that determine what will maximize ratings. So you may be indirectly right, but that also makes the parent post partially right.
As for why predictable music provides better ratings, it may very well be a chicken and egg problem. Some people say that people want to hear it because it's all that's marketed to them, and what we're saying here is that it's all that's marketed to them because it's what people want to hear.
Both points seem to have some validity, and may actually help explain why music is becoming bland and predictable. It's a simple dynamic feedback loop. The more people hear bland, predictable music, the more they used to it they become and the more they want to hear it, so radio plays it more so they end up hearing it more. If you factor in what is produced, you might end up with something that looks like this:
Want = k1 * Hear
Hear = k2 * Want + k3 * Produced
Produced = k4 * Want + k5 * Disturbance
Error = Produced - Want
Here, the "disturbance" would be original music, something new, maybe modeled by a random variable. I just tried to model this as a feedback loop to see what would happen. However, I don't have the time to do it properly. A quick guess is that it would either follow the disturbance or would damp out the disturbances and converge to a constant value. It might not be the best model either. I wonder if anyone has tried to do this before.
> Spoken truly like a white man living in a wealthy nation.
Spoken like a self-righteous faux-caring Liberal.
No - because the RIAA makes it impossible (via Payola and monopoly) for any non-RIAA band to be widely heard. There are plenty of great bands out there that won't make it big until they sell out to the RIAA for pennies on the dollar.
So what. 98.5% of people don't care. 98.5% of people aren't music snobs and they don't give a shit about authenticity or integrity or anything that music snobs care about. They just want what they think sounds good. And the RIAA provides that. Indie music isn't small beans because of the RIAA, it's small because nobody cares about it. If people cared, it would be big. "But nobody knows about it, that's why it can't get big." If it were that great, it would catch on and spread via word of mouth and whatever other non-RIAA means.
- Set up massive P2P network of FCC-legal low-power broadcast stations (i.e. - garage, cable modem and some unsigned bands)
- Distribute media through internet and synchronize broadcast thereof - every node broadcasts the same song at the same time with allowance for DJs to input their local color (they just have to watch the clock so that they know when the next song will come on)
- Create an open system providing for anyone to participate
- Voila, profit
Nobody cares!!!! Nobody cares about your stupid high-tech P2p indie open-standard whatever bullshit. You speak like it will only take ____, and then everything will crumble, the whole system will crumble because the consumer will realize that the RIAA had pulled the wool over their eyes and prevented them from seeing the light or whatever.... bullshit. That's the same argument made by all the fringe groups, from the libertarians to the socialists to the digital anarchists to the evangelical religious people: "My idea is correct and it's only a matter of time before ____ (dramatic revolution)! Only this needs to happen, and once it does, bang!" In order to understand why the RIAA is crucial to the success of iTMS, you have to understand the situation from the perspective of the average person.
Well, yeah, why preinstall Linux when 98% of people do prefer Windows? I dunno? Because they prefer Windows? Gee whiz. It's like Mormons complaining that their religion doesn't have a fair chance because Christianity has a monopoly. Well, golly. Maybe you should make your religion more appealing then - I don't know. I'm sympathetic, but I can't help you.
The RIAA markets what it does to listeners because that's what it thinks is what people most want. Don't think of the RIAA as one entity. It's actually several corporations which, although they do cooperate with each other, do also compete with each other to offer the most appealing music. They are very aggressive in picking up new trends and moulding their product into what they think people will want. They do quite often get it wrong, although you never hear about it because a failed act is, by definition, one you probably don't know about. But when they get it right, they really get it right. It's the same way with Coke or Pepsi, or beer, or laundry detergent, or clothing, or any mass-market commodity really. Coke/Pepsi sell shitloads of pretty good soda because people apparently like it. There is probably better small-label cola available in tiny markets somewhere, but I don't really care.
If people didn't generally like what the RIAA offered, they wouldn't listen to it. But surprise surprise, they do listen to it... in vast quantities.