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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.
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...
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
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
I disagree.
Must people, like me, who were big buyers of retail(brick and mortar) music went to downloading music online for free because it was easier than heading down to the local music store.
It wasn't that I wouldn't pay for the music, it was just that it was easier to download it with a better selection of music. Now there are even easier ways to download music such as iTunes and other related services. I prefer to use them now than battling with file sharing systems. So now that it is the easiest meathod for me, that is what I use.
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.
piracy will continue to run rampant until the industry offers a legal alternative which is free of DRM and hardware/software lock-in.
I love the tone of statements like these. They make you sound so sure that this will happen. We already have an endless stream of DRM-less music available at your local music store. It's not DRM that keeps people downloading from Kazaa, it's ease of use. This is why ITMS is working so well. One click and it's done. Just like Kazaa except that you don't have to try 45 downloads to get a good copy of Justin Timerlake singing a hip hop version of "Truckin'".
Of course, that doesn't address the primary users of Kazaa, kids with no damn money. It's not a coincidence that you hear of kids getting sued by RIAA. No matter what, DRM or no, these people will trade music because they can. It's too easy not to, and they can spend the $20 they save on fucking McDonalds.
next time give it a shot with popular bands
Someone did. And it's working very well. If you'd stop downloading from Kazaa for a couple of seconds (because you're protesting DRM, I know..) you'd see ITMS works very, very well, and is a good compromise between fans and the record companies. There is a reason why everyone and their damn brother is copying ITMS pretty much feature for feature. Because it works.
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.
Let me clue you in on something, outside of Slashdot, very few people know what DRM is. They simply don't care unless it gets in their way. That's where Apple has succeeded the most. It's hard to get to the limits of what they let you do with the music unless you're trying to mass-duplicate CDs.
I have a shitty sig!
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.
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals?
Stores and businesses have been doing that for years and years. Any store that doesn't just put a box of their goods out on card tables in a vacant lot with a drop box to put payment in is 'treating their paying customers like (prospective) criminals', no matter how different the rhetoric sounds the way you put it.
A Good Intro to NetBS
All you're paying for is convenience
Nope. You are also paying for
1. Quality - You can be sure that the song you just downloaded doesn't go like "What the f*ck do you think you're doing!"
2. Peace of mind - Nobody is going to come to your home and sue you for copyright infringement.
3. Moral Satisfaction - You actually PAID for it, rather than copying the art work of someone else without permission.
and more...
getSexySig();
Whereupon she decided it sounded way too complicated to deal with, and decided she didn't want to bother with it. The fact is the public is bothered by DRM, they just aren't bothered by in a moral or philisophical sense, more in a convenience sense. The thing is that while iTunes wins out right now in convenience, they still aren't anywhere near as convenient as getting plain old unencumbered MP3s, which are the industry standard and supported by all the hardware we've already invested in.
The value of online music purchasing is fast easy downloads and very low search costs (you know you're not going to waste time downloading a bad rip, an RIAA fake, etc.). You waste much less time - paying a buck a song for this service is a good deal, and you get warm fuzzies knowing at least some tiny fraction of the money goes to the artists. These value propositions wouldn't be decreased by using unencumbered MP3s - the people whose time has no value will keep using Kazaa etc. and searching for the good copies among the shit.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I think you're:
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
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.
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.
To add to your list, patience has a dollar price tag too.
If I spend 20 minutes downloading a song on Kazaa then four songs cost me an 1 hour and 20 minutes of my life. If I spend 5 min per song on iTunes then those same four songs cost me 20 minutes of my life.
That's an hour difference for four songs. I'm saving $4.00 over that hour. That's "working" for far less than minimum wage to the get the song "free" on Kazaa. Unless you're unemployed, iTunes is a much better monitary value too.
TW
Actually, I have this feeling that you just explained way too much. All you really needed to tell her was "If you want to play files bought from the iTMS, you need an iPod." You didn't need to add "or download the files from (insert p2p), or burn them to CD and rip them back"...
:)
When she asked "why not?" you could have simply said "because they don't sell it in MP3 format, they sell it in a format that only the iPod plays."
One thing I've learned through years of being a geek: NOT EVERYONE WANTS AS MUCH INFORMATION AS WE DO. When they ask us a question they want the SIMPLEST RESPONSE POSSIBLE. If you had answered her questions in these ways she probably would have said "Oh", bought a few songs from the iTMS and went out and bought an iPod. It's not like the thing is bad or something.
--
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.
Exactly. The music industry's original reason for existance was lowering the barrier to access to music. Before records became commonplace the only way to listen to music was to see a live performance. In short, you had to dedicate either a lot of time or a lot of money if you wanted to enjoy music. Then the record industry came along and suddenly people could affordably listen to their favourite music whenever they wanted, as often as they wanted. It led to the decline of live music (live music used to be EVERYWHERE), but it made music more popular.
The inherent problem with the music industry is that they have forgotten they should be making it easier to listen to music. Obtaining music nowadays is no easier than it was 30 years ago, and in fact, it's become slightly harder due to raised pricing (more than inflation), the reduction of music sampling opportunities (less music on the radio, no in-store sampling), and the introduction of technologies which make it more difficult to listen to bought music the way you want (the various copy protection systems). This is why itunes is so successful. It makes sampling and obtaining music dramatically easier, while at the same time lowering prices.
If I was a music industry exec I'd be spending all my time finding ways to make it easier for customers to buy my product. But then, that's just crazy talk.
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!
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.