Slashdot Mirror
iTMS Sells 100,000,000th Song
Macslacker writes "At 10:26 PM PDT on Sunday, July 11, Apple apparently sold its 100 millionth song at the iTunes Music Store. While the contest may now be over, congrats to Apple for a job well done."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Somersault (Dangermouse remix) by Zero7
RTFA; Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas downloaded Somersault (Dangermouse remix) by Zero7; the 100 millionth song purchased from the iTunes music store. He will receive a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes songs to create the ultimate music library for his new iPod. In addition we awarded 50 special 20GB iPods -- one to the purchaser of each 100,000th song downloaded between 95 million and 100 million songs.
He got some really nice prizes out of it too.
Apple iTunes Music Store hits 100 million song mark
Monday, July 12, 2004 @ 5:55am
Early Monday morning Apple announced that its iTunes Music Store has reached the 100 million song mark-- after launching a 'Countdown to 100 Million Song' promotion earlier this month. The milestone, a first for the online music industry, sets the standard for other music services, as Apple reached the mark only 15 months after launching the service in April 2003. Kevin Britten (of Hays, Kansas), who downloaded Somersault (Dangermouse remix) by Zero7, will receive a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate for 10,000 iTunes songs. In addition, Apple also awarded 50 special 20GB iPods -- one to the purchaser of each 100,000th song downloaded between 95 million and 100 million songs. Apple said it would post a complete list of winners soon.
Apple launched its 100 million song promotion on July 1st and offered just over 5 million songs for download in in July, a rate of just over 2.5 million songs each week. Apple had initially hoped to distribute 100 million songs within the first 12 months of the launch of the iTunes Music Store, but following Apple's 50 million song mark in March 2004 made, Steve Jobs admitted that Apple would fall short of that mark. In addition, it also became clear that the redemption rate in the Pepsi/iTunes promotion of 100 million free songs would fall well short of expectations. In April 2004, on the first anniversary of the iTunes music store, Apple announced the latest version of the iTunes Music Store and said that its industry-leading service had had more than 70 million songs downloaded--including the 5 million free songs that that were given away as part of the Pepsi/iTunes promotion.
On its anniversary, Apple gave away free song downloads each day for eight days. Apple continued to the promotion, offering free songs each week as a "risk free" way to introduce to new users to the service. Today's announcement of the 100 million song mark likely includes these song as part of the tally.
Since the July promo announcement, several developers have developed software and charts for monitoring iTunes' download rate, which many readers used to help increase their own chances to win one of the several prizes being offered by Apple. Readers, however, report that they were unable to access the store as the store approached 100 million songs, frustrating many readers attempting to purchase music (and become the grand prize winner).
"Last night I tried to access the iTunes Music store as the 100,000,000 song mark approached--only I was unable to connect," noted Dennis Callahan. "I tried for about 10 minutes to view my existing shopping cart--all to no avail. Seems this type of demand should have been anticipated and dealt with before it became an issue to those of us who would have enjoyed the possibility of winning."
Several readers also note that the download rate has dropped off dramatically since the end of the promotion.
because, AFAIK, Akamai is hosting Apple.com.
Nope, Akamai only provide a DNS service. They have nothing to do with the actual delivery of songs.
According to some automated logs I've been keeping of the contest the winning person won between Mon, 12 Jul 2004 05:19:29 GMT and 05:24:53 GMT.
The number of songs sold at the first time was 99992422.
The number of songs sold at the second time was 100014607.
Apple sold a total of 22185 songs in that five minute 24 second period. For those wondering that's roughly 68.5 songs per second.
Congrats to whoever it was.
Damn I thought i was filled with miss information.
Apple get's $.10 from each sale. That's 11% for you math wiz's.
Record labels get the bulk of the rest, but that's what they do anyway. It's the Record labels that rip off the artists. independant artists, get the same rate as labels , but take home larger percentage due to the fact they don't pay labels.
Also modern Computers can duplicate recording studios for independant artists. I know of several that use a G4 tower to record and clean up their music, burn the original CD, and then use a cd duplicator to make their own CD's. They then due all the shipping themselves. Distribution via iTunes saves them time, as they don't have to duplicate the music.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Apple makes almost NO money on their cut, they may make a little on volume but they aren't rolling in the dough by any stretch. Out of their $.35 they have to pay for bandwidth, servers, admins, advertising, and most importantly credit card transaction fees. In fact that is the reason that the iTMS was able to exist at all, they hammered out a deal with the CC companies to get lower rates on the credit card processing because typically a CC transaction cost ~$.25 plus 3% of the transaction, that rate would have eliminated any chance at break even let alone a profit. Btw indie artists who have a more fair revenue distribution agreement with their label may well earn significantly more through iTMS since the costs are so much lower the label is free to give an artist a fairly large cut of their 65%, remember Apple opened up the iTMS to more than just the big labels.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
allofmp3.com - lets you encode music at whatever quality/format you want. Selection's a little lackluster though. Oh yeah - and the downloads are coming from Russia, so it's slow. But they only charge $0.01 per Meg, so at 192 kbps, the most a CD will cost you is abou $1.05. If they've got what you want it's a kick ass deal
Kinda strengthens your point, since a member of the music industry (Apple Records) can make sure that Apple Computers is severely limited with what it can do regarding music.
Free downloads (e.g. "Free music Tuesdays" and the likes) didn't count as entries in the contest as per the rules.
The only way to enter for free was to use the "Recommend to a Friend" and send to itunes100@apple.com.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
1:download
2:burn
3:rip
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
To a degree. The digital cable box I have has all that "On Demand" capability to do PPV movies and such, but it also has 30 channels or so, each devoted to a single network. Think "HBO On Demand" and "Showtime On Demand" and such, but extend it to "NBC On Demand" or "Fox On Demand". Or even to basic cable, what with Discovery, SciFi, and even Cartoon Network and Anime on demand channels.
Anyway, you pick your channel, and pretty much every series episode that channel has shown in the last year shows up. Usually the last 3-4 movies of the week show up on there too. Hit Play, and it begins after about a 15 second delay. It also has FF and RW buttons, which strangely enough seem to send a message back to the head end to do the FF'ing or RW'ing.. Good quality too, but then it is standard NTSC TV, so that's not particurlarly hard to do. There is some minor artifacting, but it's very good compression nonetheless.
There are also HD On Demand channels on there, but I lack HD at the moment.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
His link is here.
SYS 64738
Oh, and the vocals on that cut are by MF Doom, the remix by Dangermouse.
Incidentally, that song is available for FREE as an no-DRM MP3 on Dangermouse's website. HA! I'd chastise the guy for paying for what's already free, but he did get a new powerbook, ipod, and 10,000 songs out the deal.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Oh. Even more interesting, the 100,000,000th song is available for free on the remix artist's website as a non-DRM MP3. Which I guess means that the convenience of iTunes interface was worth more than the music itself!
Hey freaks: now you're ju