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iTunes More Popular Than Most P2P Sites
bonch writes "A study by NPD Group shows that iTunes ranks #2 in popularity of music downloads, rivaling services like Limewire, Kazaa, and iMesh. The #1 service was still WinMX, but NPD believes this proves to the music industry that legal downloads can work, and that iTunes provides an economically viable alternative." From the article: "According to NPD, about 4 percent of Internet-enabled households in the nation used a paid music download store in March."
I gotta admit that when we started doing digital distribution two years ago, I thought it would be just a small income stream for the musicians - some extra income, maybe $5k/month combined.
But our checks from Apple et al have been over $300,000 a month so far this year! And that's just for our catalog of mostly-unknown all-independent music. (And hey for the record, 91% of all that income goes directly to the musician.)
NOTE: a lot of this discovery of independent music is thanks to cover songs - another twist I never expected.
Yes us alpha-geeks here on Slashdot may get our music from allofmp3.com or SoulSeek or whatever, but there's definitely millions paying that 99-cents-per song, or $20/month subscription out there. I get to see the detailed sales reports every month.
(Personally, I'm so impressed with Yahoo Music Unlimited, that it's making me want to use Windows again!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Coldplay's new single "speed of Sound" sold extremely well thru itunes, thats because it was released the day after the first airplay. I run a Coldplay fansite ( http://closingwealls.net/ - blatant plug) and following the news around the band, it seems that the single was one of the most downloaded songs ever on itunes, because of that fact. This has proven to be a very succesfull formula. Publish the single online the same day as it hits the airwaves, and people dont have to listen to the radio to hear it, for a tiny dollat they can lsiten it legally whenevewr they want. thats a huge incentive. Of all the legal downloadservices, iTunes gets it the best and is probably right that subscriptions dont work.
Are you kidding?
This new-fangled form of distribution is going to ruin all creativity as we know it! Just like the VCR killed all movie production and Xerox ruined the publishing industry! We're doomed! Dinner is Ruined! We cant have nice things!
air and light and time and space
I used to use Kazaa/Limewire to download my music before, but now I'm almost exclusively an iTunes man. I still use Kazaa for things I can't find on iTunes, but immediately buy it legally when they become available.
I can think of several factors. First, of course, the quality of the music is much better in AAC than the ripped mp3's you find online. Second, you don't get screwed by fake or misnamed files, truncated versions, or the whole other slew of crappy files you find through P2P. Third, the legality of it vs P2P is appealing, especially when you get older and you start worrying more about not making mistakes you'll regret later.
Fourth (and I think this one is very important, which is why I gave it its own paragraph) the interface to iTunes makes it so, so easy. Not only the iPod integration, but just the fact that making the actual purchase (after you login) is so smooth, you forget at the time you're actually spending $1 per song. You just click on the buy song button, the song is downloaded (and iTunes is still very useable while the song is being downloaded), and you don't even think that you will be billed for it later. The $1's add up, of course, but it took me a while to look at my collection and realize I had just spent $200 on music I could have gotten for free (had I really wanted to). On P2P it involves placing a search, looking through the hundreds of results you get back to find a version that looks legit and has the bitrate you want, hope that the file will still be available throughout the entire download, then wait while you're access to the song is limited by the slowest peer you're getting it from.
About the only reason, besides the cost savings, I can think of for still going to P2P for music is if you have a music player other than an iPod and don't want to go through the hassle of burning the song to a CD before you can rerip and transfer it to the player. Unless, of course, there are AAC to mp3/ogg/wmv converters out there than can convert Apple's DRMed version, and if there are, please tell me where, because I've looked and haven't been able to find any that work.