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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."
not yet up to the 2.5 million a week from the US. Of course, this is the first week and demand ramps up as people sign up and get the tech down pat.
This is good news for Apple (obviously) but what will be more interesting is how this affects iPod sales. We all know the iTunes Music store is a pimp for the iPod, so now that we have a controlled environment that we can monitor closely, I guess we can prove if Apple's music model really works the way they planned.
What this proves is that Apple is becoming less a computer vendor and more a consumer electronics company. Sure, they still sell computers (I have a 12" PB), but their new focus is becoming clear. The surging price of AAPL only reinforces this new direction.
Lack of competition is not necessarily a good thing. I'm glad that the model of physical-medialess music is taking off, but I'm concerned about how much power Apple/iTunes may end up having in the future if they absolutely dominate the market. Will it be any better than the record industry now? (and don't kid yourself, there may be several "major" labels, but through the RIAA they act as one).
Look at a correlary in the "real world". What if the only place to get music was at your local Best Buy and that just about every other outlet sold orders of magnitude less.
Let's just be careful what we wish for...
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Guess it didn't really matter that Napster beat Apple to launch there.
I wonder if the RIAA's listening?
Since I don't live in the U.K, France or Germany, and haven't ever bought music from the iTunes store, I guess I don't really have anything to say about this anyway... other than this is really a bit of a non-story, isn't it ?
Even the biggest competition Apple might have had in Europe decided to leave the business rather than compete with Apple on this. The article cites "Apple and Napster", but really, Napster? OD2 was worried about Napster? Somehow I think if it was just Napster, OD2 wouldn't have gone looking for an exit strategy.
Who does it prove that? Apple is just as much a computer company as they were before.
Just because they're sucessful in another area doesn't make them less of a computer company.... Stop with the FUD.
That's how Microsoft wins. It enters established, proven markets (in most cases), and simply kills other competitors by attrition and being able to withstand financial bloodletting far better than anyone else. Look at the Xbox for the best evidence of this.
Something I genuinely heard on the UK BBC evening news a few weeks back (I don't remember exactly, but this is the idea):
"iTunes, which allows people to legally purchase music online and put it onto CDs or the iPod, has been welcomed by many artists. Some, however, are reluctant to make single tracks available since they fear it will hurt album sales"
WTF???!?!?!?11
It would appear that whoever these artists are they just admitted that their albums aren't good enough to buy as a whole and they are just carried by one or two songs. They don't want people to buy these single songs because then they wouldn't pay for the filler. That's their best argument against legal downloads?
Disclaimer: I do realise there are legitimate reasons not to put music in the ITMS, but I'd think that whoever issued that as a statement probably doesn't really get the idea of letting the consumer decide...
Which really kind of sucks.
If Apple manages to get an iTMS Japan up and running, I wouldn't be able to get anything from it. That alone would kill any reason I have of ever using the iTMS.
This is a valid argument as long as they force radio stations to play the entire album instead of a single track.
The easy way (in a boneheaded twist) would be to just publish the album as a single track. It's already random access, after all.
What's even more funny is that Sony, who have the music and build consumer electronics, and are consequently in a much better position are *not* providing the end-to-end solution that Apple is (or at least are nowhere as successful as Apple is).
Maybe just because iTMS matches users needs? It's not just because it's Apple, otherwise the world would be 80% Mac.
iTMS is (as are all Apple products) extremely well designed and they managed to produce exactly what people were waiting for. The complete chain (iTMS iTunes iPod) is perfectly integrated and even my mother can use it.
It would appear that whoever these artists are they just admitted that their albums aren't good enough to buy as a whole and they are just carried by one or two songs.
I don't think that's necessarily what they're saying.
Let's say we're talking about popular music, music that gets radio play. Maybe two or three songs on an album do well on the radio. Now, does that necessarily mean the other songs on the album are bad? No, it just means they're not radio material. Maybe they're too long, or too quiet, or whatever.
When music is available a la carte, people can go out and buy just the track they heard on the radio. But in doing so, they might miss out on some other really good music.
This has happened to me many time. I've bought an album because I wanted this track or that one, and in the end some of the other tracks became my favorites.
(Of course, some albums just aren't that great. But I don't think that's universally true. For every album you can name that's got one hit song on it, somebody else can name one that's solid all the way through.)
iTunes gets around this by giving you nice, long, high-quality previews of every available track. So when I saw the Garden State trailer and I wanted to get the song used in it, I listened to 30-second slices of the other songs from the album and discovered that they were all pretty darned good. So I bought the whole album.
See? It works both ways.
I write in my journal
It's like the people who bitch about authorities going to the expense of building bicycle lanes because "I never see a bike using that lane when I drive past every morning."
Anecdotes do not trump statistics.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'm not concerned Apple is successful in another area; in fact, I think that's great. I own an iPod mini and a 12" PB Rev B. 1 GHz. Go Apple!
If you, however, think that because Apple is doing well on its consumer electronics side of the house it automatically bodes well for Apple's PC business, you're a fool. It bodes well for Apple as a commercial entity, and it may or may not bode well for your dual G5 and OSX, depending on what strategic direction Apple eventually chooses.
Apple cannot continue to be marginalized in the PC market and sustain itself. Its market share isn't growing, its losing the educational battle to Dell in spectacular fashion, and a few major software vendors have discontinued support for a number of products. Safari is not a browser other parties develop to, and interesting web endeavors wind up supporting the Mac as a second-tier afterthought (see Gmail). If you argue any of this, you're kidding yourself.
Let's continue: hardware is commoditized fully at this point, and Apple refuses to play in the low-end market. Meanwhile, Dell and other commodity vendors eat a very nice lunch. There are now seperate iPod and PC divisions within Apple, and some analysts have hinted that's in place to more easily transition out of a given business should the corporation decide to do so. Even rumors of Apple's upcoming new displays are indicating that the ADC is gone in favor of DVI, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that that move might play into a larger "consumer electronics" strategy that could cater to the x86 world. In another vein, most users have significant investments in Windows software, so even when it's upgrade time for them, they go back to a commodity x86 vendor, simply because it's cheaper and they don't have to re-purchase and re-learn new software.
But the big problem is this: no way can Apple keep up with OS and hardware R&D at the rate MS, Intel, and AMD do. If Apple's financial investments bear tastier fruit in the consumer electronics business, then dammit, that's where you'll see Apple focus. They're not stupid.
You're making no sense. You're trying to posit something along the lines of "Apple stores "haven't come to the US" unless they're in all 50 states". The moment Apple opens a store in Florida, they're in the US. It's really that simple.
France, UK, and Germany are all in Europe. Ergo, iTunes has come to Europe. Perhaps not _all_ of Europe, but they didn't say that, either.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Or maybe you just have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about. Yeah, that seems more likely.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
The facts are: US law does not universally apply, and Copyright is not some sort of divine right. If you will look around a bit you will see some of the countries with the least restrictive copyright laws have very outstanding artistic histories.
Once again you lot confuse commerce with art. Artists have traditionally sought benefactors and relied on individual sales and performance contracts to generate income. The people who benefit from US copyright law.. blah blah blah blah... we've heard it before
So I'll say it again: look around. Russia has a very loose copyright system and yet they are far from being devoid of artists - nor of plastic pop has-beens. And, in fact, some of the brightest artistic moments from that part of the world came when artists were most persecuted - nor have their very liberal policies cost them their share of post-modern innovation.
I'm not saying we should abuse artists (well, except mimes) but the simple fact is these russian (and Ukrainian - another FSU state that is slated to join the EU) websites are simply exploiting the weakness of the oppression existent in our own economy - no different than when we exploit the labors of those kids who work for a buck a day rolling beedies, assembling hundred dollar sneakers, or putting overpriced plastic dolls in boxes.
So... how does it feel to be exploited by the foibles of your own beliefs?
Face facts. People who buy *can't* meaningfully tell that it is 128kbps, or don't care.
If they did, it wouldn't sell. It does sell; therefore the price and convenience outweight the quality and sound.
GPL Deconstructed
Well, I don't know about you, but I'd rather be ethical and illegal than legal and unethical.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The artist has no control over how you listen to his song. But it is HIS art. If he doesn't want you to be able to own just a piece of it, that is his right. He can't force you to listen to it as a whole work, but he should be able to say you can't buy just a piece of it. Do you expect to be able to buy just the battle of helm's deep from LOTR? Do you want to buy just chapter 2 from the latest novel? You may at some point just want to watch that scene, or read that chapter, but the artist was justified in making sure you have the whole work. A song from an album is no different.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.