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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.
I suppose this is where I should say something like, "The iTunes Music Store wouldn't exist without the cooperation of the recording industry, so even if the music companies had little to lose, they deserve some credit for having faith in Steve Jobs' business model."
Of course, Jobs already said as much himself.
Suppose there was a competitor that didn't give us the garbage x.99 cent "marketing price". In fact, the fee paid was variable! So the extra amount is equivalent to a tip. Some might say that tips make sense with digital goods, where the marginal cost is near zero. Cynics (plentiful and uncreative) at this point just walk out of the room after delivering a few loads of regurgitated garbage. So, the option is $5 to $18. Do you think $5 is the choice taken most? Look here.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
The real problem is that Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple isn't making any money on the iTunes venture; that they only see profit through the sales of iPods. I'd be interested in knowing what they plan on doing that will change this, as we've all seen too many neato tech ideas go belly up when the investors started wondering where their money went.
if you dont have anything to say...don't say it.
if you think the story isn't worth posting...dont' post it
seriously do we really need a story every time ITMS reaches a nice number? 10 million, 20 million, 25 million...
It's popular we get it.
The real question is how is this affecting sales of ipods since it has already been determined that Apple doesn't make much if any money off of ITMS.
meep
Its cool that an online music store has taken off, but this still propagates the Record industry's business model.
Its time for all of those who flame at the riaa but at the same time praise Apple to step up.
Nothing has really changed, it just looks prettier with an os x theme.
Let me guess, you're one of those people who routinely blasts the media for their context-less use of figures as well.
I'd gladly have bought several songs from them if it was DRM-free. I want the freedom to use it on whatever device I want, with whatever software I choose.
I'd support Itunes if it were its own industry, with its own music, like mp3.com. The problem with Itunes is it takes the flawed recording industry and extends their monopoly. This would be like steve jobs releasing a version of Microsoft Windows for the Mac, and expecting us all to use that. Its bullshit.
If I wanted to support the RIAA I'd buy buying CD's right now. Take a hint!
Support Itunes(RIAA)> but not the artists?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Well, history might tell us something. They didn't bow to the pressure of Microsoft when they came out with their Mac/GUI competitor, Windows, increasing the PC's viability and ease of use. But they didn't suddenly try to increase market share by allowing OEMs. Will things be different this time around if competition heats up?
Kazaa sure has a LOT of music out there. But it is not in a quick accessible format like the iTMS. I can search, sample, and buy hundreds of songs very quickly. Each and every song is complete and prefectly encoded to my satisfaction. I don't have to download entire songs just to see if I like them or even see what genre the songs fit in. I don't have to screw with too many people downloading from one person and sit "in a line" to get the song. I don't have to worry about only getting 10kbytes/s while my connection is 100kbytes/s.
With iTMS I can find things quickly, easily, without a hitch at the cost of only a few bucks a day. Thats cheaper then some people's smoking habbits. It's something I will have around with me always, sitting on my iPod, etc..
A quick comment on the iTMS vs Napster/Others. A feature that a lot of people overlook that I have found quite pleasing is the integration of your purchased iTMS songs with iMovie & iDVD. I don't believe Microsoft's WMA stuff is able to integrate into their "Movie Maker" program. With iMovie I can just drag purchased songs onto tracks, same with iDVD..
The P2P apps have come a long way since their inception but it is still a struggle for non-technical people to come to terms with centralised servers and clientids.
Apple has always enabled ordinary people to use computers. This does not mean that they "dumb down" the technology, rather they lower the learning curve to allow people to at least get on and and working before they need to start seriously learning.
iTunes provides that portal for easy access to online content and it allows people to pay for it. I am sure if Apple had a free peer-to-peer site, we would be talking bigger numbers. But the success of iTunes is part of the overall Apple strategy and design guidleines.
What amazes me is that Apple are not making any money from it and are using it simply to sell mp3 players. How much are the record companies raking in on this and yet still complaining about the death of the music industry?
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals, when the pirates will simply continue to use uncrippled formats?
Because they have to?
Do you seriously think the music companies would agree on letting a company distribute non-DRM'ed music?
But the option could of course be to not sell music. But maybe Apple wish to sell music.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
Why no secondary benefits? Don't you think people may try a song because, hey, they heard about it and it's less than a buck, and, hey, it sounds pretty cool, so one click or three away from buying the whole thing?
Get off my launchpad!
Hi Adolph. No, I'm paying because I'm really, really busy, and I wanted to hear this album, but just don't have time to hunt around kazaa for all 15 songs off this album for an hour and half, only to find out that half of them were ripped by a 14 year old, so there's glitches in the file, and it ends 8 seconds too short. I'd rather spend $9.99 than an hour and a half of my time.
So, why do you spend an hour and a half to download an album off kazaa instead of $10 to buy it off iTMS? Are you so poor you just can't afford $10? Does your cardboard box need a new roof? By the way, Rufus says there's good eats in the dumpster behind Mickey D's tonight.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
"Although it seems like more music companies are getting directly involved in the online music biz, I haven't seen any reports on what orgs like the RIAA really think about these commercial online music offerings."
RIAA on Napster/Penn State agreement
iTMS is a reseller, just like Amazon or Tower Records. And, a sale is a sale. Apple launched iTMS with the cooperation of the artists and record companies. I'm sure the record companies who've shared in Apple's good fortune are thrilled.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Let's see. iTunes has been a hit on the Macintosh. Folks were clamoring for awhile to see it on Windows, too. Now that it's on Windows, even more folks are using it. So far, so good. 25 million songs (I'm probably responsible for around 40 of them) is a lot of songs, no doubt. But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
The iTunes Music Store makes little if no profit. At all.
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods. And they make a bundle on every iPod. Between the iTMS and iTunes for Windows, there's a lot more iPods being sold nowadays than there were when the iPod was just a Mac novelty (OK, a Windows version came out with the first refresh, but it was Firewire-only and used MusicMatch).
Sure, iTunes locks you into buying songs in AAC format. At least it's an open spec. Most of the Windows jukeboxes lock you into buying Windows Media songs, 'nuff said. And nobody of any significance offers downloadable unencumbered MP3 files. If you buy, you get DRM. Apple's is at least fairly transparent.
What iTMS does prove is that there is a demand for buying one-off songs and permanent downloads. It proves that the subscription model the publishers wanted to force down the buyers' throats was a stillborn idea. It also proves that most of the other music stores that are springing up right now are doomed - because unless there's a secret cabal lined up to screw Apple out of extra money, the only way any of these companies can compete is if they use their stores to help sell high-margin peripherals. Like their own MP3 players.
Now, if some other company comes up with a player that's a far better unit than the iPod, attaches it to a store, and manages to wrestle the lead from Apple, then Apple might have problems justifying staying in the music biz at zero profit. But this kind of thing is right up Steve's alley, and I doubt he'll let this lead slip away without a fight. You know, it wouldn't be the first time Dell walked away from a market with a bloody nose. It doesn't happen often, though.
Plus, as formats go, once you buy into a DRM format they've got you for good. Every iTunes for Windows user is one that'll probably never go to Windows Media.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You're also paying the artist and the producer for their work. I'm not willing to face fines or go to jail to get music for free. If I'm not willing to face up to the penalties, I'm not going to do something, whether I'm going to get caught or not.
Eleven cents or whatever it is going to the artist is better than nothing, and I'd rather support a Large, Evil Corporation (TM) than steal.
The Internet is full of people who will tell you that they are boycotting the RIAA and send money to the artist for all the songs that they download. If you're one of them, the more power to you. However, if you're one of the majority that never quite gets around to sending out that ten-spot, then congratulations on your ability to sleep at night.
I am making the big prediction. Along with the Pepsi giveaway, music downloads are going to be paid for in large majority with things other than cash. You will get them with boxtops, bottle caps, affinity points (frequent flyer miles, credit card points, gas receipts, time share points, disney products etc....), rewards for school fundraisers, anything you can think of will become a replacement for direct cash payment. They will become the ultimate giveaway item. This will become important, because anything to overcome the friction of the credit card purchase on a sub-dollar item will be a major driver for the distribution sites.
This will have the side affect of creating an even larger hit based marketplace. Hits will generate the vast majority of downloads, and the most amount of money for the artists. The return of the single as the product of choice. For most artists and most songs this will generate very little money.
It will be very hard on the CD distribution system as more people get most of their music online. This will also have the side affect of making the used CD industry more difficult as there will be less content available. Which will probably be good for the music industry in the long run.
Legal music, free for the consumer, is going to be the most disruptive force in the industry.
I tried to get this as a story, but it will do as a comment...
The music industry is looking for additional ways to profit off the downloading scene...
As reported by the LA Times, Apple and Time Warner have started offering specially designed Lord of the Rings CD-Rs.
These limited edition blank CDs are specifically designed for users purchasing the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrackfrom Apple's iTunes Music Store.
What I am going to do is wait until they provide "pre-burned" CDR's like RedHat does... That would be cool.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
How do we know most people don't like indy artists? They usually don't even get played on the radio, so how does anyone know if they like them or not??
Isn't it correct that Apple make next to nothing after their RIAA taxes, credit card processing fees and site fees?
I don't quite understanding what they're celebrating - the fact that they are showing that people *will* pay to download music, or the fact that they have probably sold a ton of iPods off the back of iTunes...
Either way, surely the logical next step here is for bands to sell the music themselves online? I'd feel a lot happier knowing that my money was going straight to the artist rather than a pigopoly, Apple might actually make a respectable profit per song rather than giving the majority of the cash to the RIAA, and it could possibly lead to better content - ie. Exclusive internet tracks. If I was Steve Jobs, step 2 of the music domination master plan would be to offer a system where Apple sell tunes on behalf of the artists, and just collect a tax per song.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
WMA does integrate into Movie Maker just like that, actually.
This comment in particular strikes me as a bit odd. Not only can you use the protected WMA files in things like Windows Media, but any other program that uses DirectShow or DirectSound, like Winamp. You're not limited to iTunes and the iPod like you are with iTMS.
That, I believe, is a feature commonly overlooked. Windows Media codecs (including support for DRM) is built into the entire OS, so any program using OS APIs that use the OS' codecs (I can't think of any that don't, aside from iTunes) has access to them and can use them.
It's interesting, I have a friend who works for one of the major music labels here in Australia, and very strongly advocates that the only real reason the label's are against the whole mp3/online thing is becuase it removes both revenue and the gross ability to influence the market from those major labels. It's difficult to setup a distribution chain, advertising and marketing model, instantly, to compete with the existing companies. However with the advent of the internet, competition is more likely, and that same competition could well be motivated to do a better job.
It's understandable....only time will tell if it happens, and that will be directly influenced by the attitudes of major artists towards record labels in securing contracts.
One can only presume that there will similarly be successful online mp3 sites, who have the ability to see musical ability in artists that identifies with the markets taste, and have power in the music industry. Will it be Sony/Universal/EMI/....or will it be the new tech startups......
In the mean time, the argument is still valid that many people will still copy mp3's when they haven't paid for them, even if they were 10c a song. Argument is also valid that whilst those people exist, they will usually put more effort into finding a way to crack protection than actually spending what should hopefully become, a fair price for music online.
Note to industry: bloody hell music is over priced!
Check out this discussion in slashdot, 1999 about custom CDs - some of the comments actually suggest creation of an online store and make the (dire) prediction that the RIAA would not like it, and that it would take an exceptional salesperson to talk to them about it.
Here's the article
Looks like the 'exceptional salesperson' was Steve Jobs. Wonder if anyone imagined back then that the RIAA would turn out to be so vindictive!
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Yeah, you've got a new switcher right here, and I followed exactly this chain. First got iTunes/Win, then got an iPod (nearly the same week) and quickly started looking at iBooks. This from someone who has been using PCs for 10+ years, and used to layer scorn on Macs :)
I'm very happy with my OSX now, and considering one of those shiny dual 1.8 G5s...
But we tend to forget what Steve Jobs clearly says in light of all this hype:
Why, pray tell, is this not a problem for Apple? Because Apple uses the iTMS as a Trojan Horse to sell more iPods.
I only partially believe what Jobs has to say on the matter because he certainly is playing this up for effect (the effect of not alienating the free-downloads-or-die-and-kill-music-middlemen crowd). Once the infrastructure for iTMS is in place and paid for, every additional download HAS to be pure profit for Apple. There is no way that every single cent of the forty Apple makes on each and every download goes to administrating the label/artist payout once the infrastructure has been built and paid for.
Watching people uncritically repeat Jobs' statement that iTMS makes little or no profit reminds me of Ben Kenobi and the stormtroopers: "These are not the droids you're looking for," except here it's "iTMS makes no money for Apple. We are not an evil music disbtributor." If Apple is not making money off iTMS, they will be soon. At some point the hefty profit on iPod sales will be accompanied by a smaller profit on iTMS sales. The real question is how many iTunes downloads does it take to equal or beat the profit on an iPod sale.
blog
No. 128kb/s isn't that good.
I love it when people forget we're talking about AAC, not MP3. 128 kb/s AAC far surpasses most 192 kb/s VBR MP3s.
Option-Shift-K.
"I love it when people forget we're talking about AAC, not MP3"
I love it more when people say this and think that any compression scheme at 128kb is CD quality. Its not. You only think it is because you listen to music on your PC speakers and can't tell the difference.
That's the truth. The only people who agree with you are computer journalist, and they *SURPRISE* all listen on PC speakers.
Do you realize how silly you sound when you claim AAC has "magic" in it? Every independant test shows there are no clear winners at these low bit rates.
Here's the most important point... the comparison isn't between MP3 and AAC, but between AAC and the CD. AAC loses *BADLY* in this comparison. Again, because you're listening on the crappy ear buds that come with your player or the crappy speakes with your PC.
A friend of mine gave me a mix tape many years ago. Sadly, I lost the actual tape but still have the case. Not only is it some beautiful artwork, but she was kind enough to include a track list. With iTMS, I've finally been able to reacquire that lost tape (save one or two tracks) and download them with little fuss. I tried a couple of times using P2P, but it took too damn long to find shit so I gave up. ...hell. I sound like a freakin' commercial. Well, that's my 2
fs
iTunes only really runs on Windows XP (forget what they tell you about Win2K).
Win XP only makes up about 8% of the OS share on home PCs, which is only about three times higher than the share of OS X.
When you look at it that way, the numbers aren't too out of whack.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
ITMS quality is convenient, nothing more. You can find the same stuff on Kazaa with more searching.
Demonstrably untrue. Can you find me a 128 kbps AAC or equivalent (256 kbps MP3, I guess) of Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue" that was made from the original studio master? Or will they all be crappy little rips from CD?
Can you find me a copy of Vince Guaraldi's instrumental version of "Christmas Time Is Here?"
Can you find me Bach's Cantata no. 80 AT ALL?
If you're into Top 40 and you've got some free time on your hands, Kazaa's not bad. If you actually like music on the other hand, Kazaa's incredibly lame. I don't see what people see in it at all.
And as for the question of your moral character... let's just say that people who feel okay about being thieves are in the strict minority.
The all-time best example of failed Apple predictions is of course this one:
"Folks, the Mac platform is through..." - John C. Dvorak, 1998
Then there's this recent gem:
"Stick a fork in 'em -- this Apple is cooked." Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/03
But my current favorite is this example of damning with faint praise:
"While praising Apple's service, analysts caution that its success won't necessarily transfer completely to the Windows environment. " - John Borland, c|net news, 7/28/03
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
What about something that faked iTMS into thinking it was burning to a virtual burner, and then that program took all the raw data it just grabbed from iTMS and made mp3 files out of them?
Would be an interested idea, at least.
I have several questions. With music downloads becoming the predominant method of getting music these days, why invest so much money in 24 Bit 96 KHz music production? Or even 16 Bit 44.1 KHz for that matter?
The problem is compression. We are now sacrificing music quality for quantity. Can I download the real 16 Bit PCM tracks from ITunes? No? Then why does Pat Metheny need to think about recording the next album with pro gear? Who cares about all those quiet subtleties and nuances if the compression just throws them out?
What I'm saying is that yea, I'm paying less for music these days with ITunes and the like, but I'm also getting less quality that before. Many people don't take that into account. So while we enjoy the grand number of titles available to us, the corporates are quietly creating a class system to the music we enjoy.
It started with 45s vs. LPs. Then cassettes vs. CDs. Now it's 1 dollar downloads for singles, $12.99 for real CD's, or $20 for 24 Bit SACDs.
My point is that the quality of the music is less, but the price we pay for the real thing hasn't changed like we originally wanted it to. So we've quietly made a subconsious sacrifice that we are somehow getting what we wanted all along. I say no, this is wrong. What I wanted in reality was a cheaper CD or SACD, not some cheap knock-off that stands in their place.
The music industry is more than happy to sell you cheap quality music so that you'll eventually go out an buy the real thing...FOR THE SAME OLD PRICES! How have we ended up doing better?
Let me download the real 16 Bit PCM tracks from ITunes and I might change my tune. Until then, stop all this glorifying the download services. They all suck.
Just my opinion.
+1
While this is certainly a great thing, for some reason iTunes is having a lot of difficulty getting completely independent musicians (musicians without a label). I sell cd's on CDbaby.com, a big site for indie music, and while Apple and CDbaby have been negotiating since this summer, and with no disagreements on rates, this process is pretty much stuck. I have no idea why this is taking so long... or maybe this is fast for the music biz and I need to be more patient.