iTMS Europe: 800,000 Tracks In A Week

no_demons writes "In a press release, Apple has announced that the "European" iTunes Music Store has sold 0.8 million tracks in a week, with around 450,000 being sold in the UK alone. According to Steve Jobs other services were shifting only 50,000 tracks a week in Europe before the launch."

Comments

Re:Great in comparison to others, but ...

[TrueBuckeye]

If anyone really cares, this is how it breaks down:

Population of Germany, France and UK: 203,119,530
Population of US: 293,027,571

Which gives us
3.94 downloads per 1000 people for Europe
8.53 downloads per 1000 people for the US

This assumes 800,000 downloads for Gr, Fr, and UK compared to 2.5 mil for the US.

Populations are the 2004 Estimates from The CIA World Factbook

I just tried it - you can't.

[jared_hanson]

I decided to try this myself, you can't buy from the foreign stores. It gives you a message stating that your account is only authorized for purchase in the US.

So, in case anyone else was wondering, there is your answer.

Re:This may be a "bad thing"

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I assume you've seen Steve Jobs give his iTunes pitch. He's done it several times now at various events.

It basically goes like this:

People want to get their music one track at a time off the Internet. We know this because people are doing it like crazy, using these various underground services.

We want to give people what they want. But just giving them music-over-the-Internet isn't enough. Subscription services suck, too-restrictive licensing sucks, et cetera, et cetera.

Here's why illegal downloading is cool: (At this point he lists five or six key things. It's free, it's convenient, whatever.) But here's why illegal downloading sucks: (No art, bad encoding, hard to find stuff, and it's also stealing.)

Then he proceeds to explain how iTunes addresses those points, one by one. iTunes isn't free, but it's cheap. On the other hand, it's way easier to find things, the quality is much better, you get art with your tracks, and it's "good karma."

He actually builds the business case for iTunes from scratch, right there in front of you. It's a really cool presentation.

Whether you're an Apple fan or not, whether you're an iTunes fan or not, you have to admire Steve Jobs' ability to give shareholders, investors, partners, and end-users a well-thought-out, persuasive presentation.

All those dumbasses who think PowerPoint is the second coming could learn a lot from him. :-)