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

I'd be interested to see the Windows/Mac breakdown

[byolinux]

A lot of people on here were doubting that the UK has much of a Macintosh userbase.

Of the people I know who've used iTMS AND BOUGHT SOMETHING, about half are Mac users and half aren't.

I know a lot more Windows users who've installed it though.

A Small, Nimble Adversary

[ackthpt]

So while inertia-bound Microsofattempts to shift itself toward its many stated directional goals and moribund music industry giants try to pedal their own wares, puny Apple Computer, with a less than perfect portfolio continues to run rings around these beasts. I'm not exactly a fan of Apple, and find it quite odd that they have branched into music distribution, but I do love these results. Apple is establishing itself well and by the time the competition sorts out its own problems iTunes will be ubiquitous.

Re:A Small, Nimble Adversary

[mveloso]

It's funny, but Apple is getting into the consumer electronics business at a much deeper level than, say, Dell or Gateway.

When Dell or Gateway say "we're in the consumer electronics business," what they mean is "we sell consumer electronics." They compete against Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. That's a hard business to be in.

When Microsoft says "we're in the consumer electronics business," what they mean is "we make the software that allows someone else to make consumer electronic devices, and take a cut." Nobody likes this because nobody wants to pay someone else for their IP - and nobody wants to fund a competitor, either (ie: Microsoft).

When Apple says "we're in the consumer electronics business," they actually design, build, and sell products that are end-user targeted. They're like Panasonic, Pioneer, or Sony, in that they actually create and sell products. Except that the manufacturers don't have their own stores, but whatever.

What Apple's done is taken control of personal music distribution. What that means is they're an end-to-end solution provider of music to the individual. Buy music from iTMS, play music on your machine with iTMS, play music on your stereo with Airport Express, and bring your music with you with the iPod. Now with the BMW thing, you integrate your iPod with your car (at a minimal level).

Likely the next iPod will be an Airport Express-enabled, so you can wirelessly stream music from your iPod to your stereo. Then there are even more gadgets and doodads that extend the music "ecosystem," to use a somewhat abused word.

It'll be an interesting to see what's coming up...those guys are full of surprises, which is what invention (and innovation) is all about.

Re:yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be because iTMS has no effective DRM.

DVD Jon on VLC and Apple's iTunes singles
Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen writes, in reference to VLC's support for iTunes's M4P DRM format:

In case you didn't know, I'm a VideoLAN developer. I reverse engineered FairPlay and wrote VLC's FairPlay support. It's been available in VideoLAN CVS since January, but the first release to include FairPlay support is VLC 0.7.1 (released March 2.).

Just wanted to let you know that once you have generated the user key file(s), you can copy them to as many computers you want and play your M4P files there using VLC.

iTunes DRM: Necessary? Good or evil?

[MacGoldstein]

A bit off topic, but it will come up anyways, so mod me however you wish:

I've used iTunes since its inception (on OS 9), and have bought around 30-40 songs since the release of iTMS US (and have also downloaded the countless weekly free tracks). The DRM, while not particularly inconvenient to me (I have a 20GB iPod) seems to be a great sticking point to others. I have never had the need to use my music on more than 3 computers simultaneously, and have never needed to burn a playlist so many times as to exceed the iTunes limit (and even then you can change the playlist and burn again)

That said, the steps necessary to convert my favorite fragging tracks to .ogg for use in UT2004 seemed unnecessarily complex (burn to cd, rip to wav, encode to ogg), and as such I am wondering if a DRM is really necessary. I haven't pirated music in over a year now, and indeed have no such music on my laptop (or iPod) currently: I am now more prone to buy music from iTMS.

I am proud of Apple's successes and hope they go far in the future, but DRM is a dangerous and narrow path, and I only hope that Steve Jobs doesn't take his penchant for control too far with this one. Until that time, the current implementation is sufficient for me, and with new technologies such as Airtunes connectivity and convergence are becoming more mainstream: the need for DRM-less files is becoming less.

However... Apple needs to open their format to other companies. I dont give a damn, Steve, if iPod comprises 50%, 75% or even 100% of the market, if another company wants to use your insanely great AAC Protected format, they should be able to. The fact that consumers cannot use other digital devices to play the product Apple is selling is a major sticking point with many, and the tools necessary to allow this are being intentionally broken with each successive iTunes release.

Yes, I'm a fervent Mac Evangelist, but while this works perfectly for me, getting a friend with another mp3 player to start using a Mac and/or the iTMS is going to be pretty hard if I have to explain to him that he has to break the user agreement to play the files by breaking the DRM.

The format needs to be opened, and it needs to happen soon.

A question to our European readers

[chia_monkey]

Those are some pretty impressive numbers indeed. In one week iTMS is supposedly the most popular music service in Europe now. Here's my question: since there were already other services up and running in Europe, were the European users waiting for iTMS to arrive and then just went nuts when it opened? Or did everyone switch from the other services? Why the huge numbers, which are blowing the other services out of the water, when others were available?

Phrase that another way

[Zastrossi]

And the headline reads: All of Europe buys equivalent of 65,000 CDs this week. Europe buys roughly 3 billion recorded music units (PDF) (almost all of which are CDs) a year. Even if iTunes maintained that sales rate (which is extremely unlikely), they'd sell the rough equivalent of 3.4 million CDs a year, or roughly 0.1 % of the total CDs sold. Sure, that'll make a dent in this whole piracy thing.

Two people...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I know two people that saw the amazing usability and ease-of-use of iTunes, asked me what the "good thing was that is different about iTunes" and over lunch I explained that there is a thing called a GUI and a science about "Usability". Things clicked. They went to the apple store on their own and two Powerbooks were sold. Their dell boxes are on ebay.

Re:In other news

[cens0r]

This is a valid argument as long as they force radio stations to play the entire album instead of a single track.

There are two problems with this thinking. The first is that radio is really just a commercial for the album. I think of it as analagous to a movie trailer. They're both lower quality previews of what you can expect to get when you purchase the full product. No one expects to pay $1 to get the best scene from a movie though.

The second problem is that the kind of album that is one coherent piece of art, is unlikely to garner a lot of radio play, kind of making this a moot arguement.

I think it is also illegal to broadcast an entire album from a band non stop, at least in the US anyway.

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.

I actually have an album that is like this, and I find it quite annoying (I split it up manually when I ripped it). However, I don't think the end user should be forced to listen to the whole album at one sitting. You're allowed to pause movies, watch a certain scene only, or again, read one chapter of the book, etc. In all those cases you're given the whole piece of art, and told to do with it what you wish. That is how I look at albums. And that's the reason I see why an artist might want you to have the whole thing and not just a song or two.

Re:128 Kbps ONLY!!!

[aristotle-dude]

Ok. Here is the thing. The 128Kbps ACC files on iTMS are not the same as 128Kbps AAC files ripped from a CD let alone crappy 128Kbps MP3. The songs on the iTMS are encoded with a professional quality encoder from the Studio masters. Encoding from a CD would mean you were encoding twice. Once to PCM and again to ACC or MP3.