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Apple 100,000,000 iTMS celebration
beef curtains writes "From Apple's iTunes Music Store Countdown page: 'When the number of songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Store crosses 95 million, Apple will begin the countdown to 100 million songs by giving away 50 special 20GB iPods -- one to the purchaser of each 100,000th song downloaded between 95 million and 100 million songs. In addition, the person who downloads the 100 millionth song will receive a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40GB iPod, a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes songs to create the ultimate music library for the iPod, and the opportunity to create a Celebrity Playlist to be published on the iTunes Music Store.' Check out the countdown on Apple's front page, and get ready to drop stupid amounts of cash on iTMS over the weekend. I'll see you in the ramen noodle aisle after the count passes 100 million!"
If you think of this like a raffle, there are $0.99 single entries, or multiple entries for $9.99 which are the ablums.
So bring on the iMixes with the most songs for $9.99. I recommend Rush in Rio, a live Rush concert featuring 31 rocking hits from Neal Peart, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson for $17.99, that's only $0.58 per raffle entry and some great live rock to boot!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The counter on the front page of Apple.com seems stuck at 94,767,325 no matter how much I'm refreshing. A live updater would be more handy ;)
But seriously, much as I dislike the RIAA, its tactics and current copyright arrangements for music and films in general, it's nice to see a company other than Microsoft having some success for a change.
In order to download a track from iTunes you have to purchase it. However, this page states that "No purchase necessary". I'm sure the legal department said they have to throw that in, but how else are you going to win without purchasing anything? Pepsi bottle caps? Gift certificate downloads? The average person is going to have to buy something.
Somehow I'm getting more and more eager to get iTMS here in Finland, too.
Oh, well. It's not like they're giving away free iPods or anything.
No, wait..
When the number of songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Store crosses 95 million. . .
But how many of those 95 million songs were actually purchased? Haven't they given away, through various promotions, a lot of songs already? I still question the commercial viability of the iTunes Music Store.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
After the count reaches the required # of mils, observe the counter value vs. Time (maybe requires some OCR software to get the number from the GIF or whatever Apple used to prevent this type of thing), then try to make a best prediction when 10,000 mark is getting close and dump some cash in.
Might work, huh?
Paul B.
P.S. Even if one does not want to actually risk their $$ on this game, a software to plot the chart would be still interesting to hack together -- by taking a derivative we will see if other people are trying to do this -- if yes, dN/dT should peak around 10,000*x
i hope they include a fat pipe to the net to get them all ...
vodka, straight up, thank you!
From http://phobos.apple.com/external_counter.js:
function count(){ var num = 94778717;return num; }
does not look like too dynamic a function to me...
Paul B.
So slashdot sinks to reporting company give-away promotions.
You just stole my obligatory insensitive clod joke about not living in a country where iTMS operates.
/. for that, though. ;-) )
Damn guys from Turku, always getting on the way... even on Slashdot, perkele!
(For those who didn't get it: me and parent live in different cities in Finland, and people on my and his city are always ready to start flamewar with each other. I don't think there are enough of us on
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
A couple people over at MacRumors forums have created some simple tracking devices for sales since the counter has gone up. Check out some graphs here and or download this simple app (Windows and Mac OS X in archive).
the individual who writes a screen scaper to notify when a threshold has passed, and then purchases large albums until they cross over 100 mil.
yay.
-Q
And most of the 95 million songs have been sold. Apple and Pepsi stated only about five million songs were given away in the Pepsi contest (although there were 100 million chances to win). And that was the biggest promotion that they have had
If I didn't like their stuff so much, I'd be so annoyed that they keep offering such good competitions in the US and leave Australians (and many other places, I'm sure) out to dry.
We'd be happy enough even just to have access to the iTMS - the competition would be nice too, but please at least let us use the store.
But it depends on if 30 min is "live" enough on the timescale. 95M songs over, how long have they been around, a year? 1y = 17520 half-hours, or about 5,400 songs/half hour... Yeah, not enough resolution, but maybe 1) they were around longer than a year and 2) one can play day vs. night hours game. When would you expect purchases to peak? Maybe 4 pm Western time to 2 AM Eastern time, or something... The rest of the day kids are in school or sleeping, orders flow in much more slowly and can probably be timed.
Paul B.
I'm wondering where did you get the 100-200 songs/min number from (see my other post, I came up with 180 songs/minute, not too bad!) -- but there are early morning minutes and afternoon minutes, I bet the majority of the purchases happen in the late afternoon.
Paul B.
(I thought it was going to be harder than that to get the number out...)
Or maybe I'm just too bored at work today...
Paul B.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=113152&cid=958 7496
;-)
it is 470 songs/minute RIGHT NOW. Wow, not bad at all they are doing!
(See the actual values and posting time)
Paul B.
Think about all the random stuff you could put out on that playlist. The Girl with the Vagina Made of Glass comes to mind(great song btw).
And we can only imagine what would happen if the GNAA got to control the playlist....
I was watching Wimbledon yesterday, and there was an interview with Maria Sharapova, the 17-year-old "next big thing" from Russia.
The interviewer asked her what she did in her spare time and she said something along the lines of: "I'm always listening to my iPod, always listening to my iTunes ".
I'm not sure why but I found this quite sad. It's as if, to her, the artists and even the music itself has lost any uniqueness or individuality. The songs are just a collection of different products on "my iTunes".
I suppose it's no different from someone saying, ten years ago, that they like listening to the radio. I just felt... resentful? I think that's the best word to sum it up. I feel that people should consider each artist/song as something special, not just "my iTunes". Nobody would say "I like listening to music from HMV" or "I like listening to music from Walmart", so why do people have this fondness for iTunes? It's just another store with the single goal of making money.
It's an odd form of brand loyalty, and I have to say that I don't like it.
After all the customers of the itunes music store generally ALREADY have ipods :)
i've written a little webpage that tracks the counter value and displays how many song sales to go before the next 100,000 milestone. The background changes colour from green, yellow , orange and finally red when it's about time to get buying a tune. it updates every 60 seconds. Apple's counter appears to update every 2 to 5 minutes.
Plotting a graph the sales over time seem very linear - it's a straight line at the moment. It's trivial to extract the value for the counter, although i'm not spilling the beans here to avoid everyone hitting apples server even harder than it is now.
I hope to get an ipod as my 40gb model that i purchased whlst on holiday in the USA was stolen when my car was broken into the other week.
anyway, there should be 50 chances to hit it correctly. A friend of mine was talking about getting his script to SMS him just before he should get getting online to make a purchase... i could do with that if it happens in the middle of the night!
I hope you posted this same comment on the Dell DJ story on the front page.
No, what does it mean?
The numbers seem very suspicious: that curve is decidedly linear. You would expect to see some variation, because of (for example) of the time of day. It looks like Apple picked some reasonable songs/minute value.
What happens when the reasonable rate begins to differ from the average real rate? It would probably be a bad idea for them to give out the actual data, which would be useful for competitors.
Anyway, either Apple is going to use the actual data, or they are going to use the fake data. I imagine they will use the fake data, because otherwise the 10^8 mile mark will come on the homepage at the wrong time. If they *do* use the fake data, you could theoretically increase the odds of winning to something like 1 in 2000 by picking the right five minute interval. If you were even smarter, you could time it to the second.
Assuming you're the only one to read this comment, of course. I wonder what the legal implications are?
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
I gotta believe you know, but if you don't:
It's a crude slang term for the labia minora, vaginal lips.
You gotta love this news. This comes out while Dell has their "trade in your old iPod for $100 off one of our mp3 player" deals. Sony announced their "we have a media player that isn't exactly mp3 but we plan on it killing the iPod" player. Microsoft no doubt wants to have their new device (whenever it comes out) unseat the iPod. It's a war out there, and Apple (who already holds the lead in market share of players) is upping the ante once again and rubbing everyone's nose in the fact they're about to have 100 million download. Wow...just wow. I wonder what the mp3 player and music download site scene will look like a year from now.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
My music collection went from mostly MP3 to mostly M4P. When I decided to get a portable jukebox, I was limited to the iPod. (Decoding DRM'd music hasn't become user-friendly enough to make that an option.)
In the end, I'm very happy with my iPod, though. So I'm not complaining.
--
Yes!!! All my practice at getting first post on slashdot will finally pay off!
Sorry to disappoint the rest of you, but that 100,000,000th song PowerBook prize is a good as mine!
Oh, and FISRT POST!!!11!!1!!
(losers!)
This time the contest ASSUMES use of computers! And many people will be manually waiting for the number to reach certain level to press "Submit"... Why would not one to program his computer to give an audible buzz when it is time? ;-)
Paul B.
All you need to do to enter for free is use their "Tell A Friend" feature.
How To Enter. You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by: 1) downloading a song from iTunes (any Free Download Single of the Week will be deemed an ineligible entry); or 2) a free alternative means of sending an email to Apple at itunes100@apple.com via the iTunes "Tell a Friend" feature (a song download or Tell a Friend email will be deemed an "Entry(ies"). The "Tell a Friend" feature can be easily accessed at iTunes by selecting a song, and clicking the "Tell a Friend" link that is displayed for that song. One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded or Tell a Friend email sent. The Promotion begins following the downloading of the 95,000,000th iTunes song, and ends with the downloading of the 100 millionth Entry ("End Date"). Only Entries submitted in this time period will be accepted.
Than use bigger bullets!
Why not have ten songs you want, that way you can cover a larger area when you buy. Sorta like finding a stack
..with your Name, Address, and Telephone Number, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
iTunes 100,000th Song Promo c/o Trash dumpster 1 Infinity Loop Cupertino, CA 95014"
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
I've figured out what the kink in the trend is... it should have been obvious to me. It was the USA going to sleep. The sales slowed down when it was just the EU countries, UK, France & Germany left on their own. When the USA wakes up again the sales will accerlate back to their previous level again. When the EU goes to sleep the sales will slow down a little bit, but not as much as when the USA dropped out earlier. It's going to be interesting to chart this cycle overtime. Shame we can't get separate counters for each store becuase I'd be real interested as to when people are buying most in each country. I'd imagine that the most sales would happen in the evenings and at weekends because people are at work or school. So, as the EU are coming home from work/school the USA also wakes up and adds to the sales. When the EU goes to sleep the USA are coming home and will increase their sales as well.
Is is the same as "meat sheets" or "duck wings?" Gosh I hope so.
Since Apple ignores Canada as an actual market, we don't have iTunes here. I can't win an iPod but I get my music free from P2P.
All this 'X songs / CDs /...<whateva> ' is just a bunch of "my dick is 0.01 cm longer then yours"-PR-sensationalism tricks. *Who buys such "crap"?*
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Does anyone know? Can anyone know? That would be a thing too,