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iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download
SirWraith writes "In case anyone hasn't realized Apple has had a counter going up to a billion for a few weeks now. Apparently last night, they hit the mark. From ABC News: 'Apple says Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Mich., was the lucky audiophile who downloaded "Speed of Sound" by Brit pop band Coldplay, giving the Cupertino, Calif., company bragging rights to the 10-figure milestone.
Thanks to a generous prize package from Apple, Ostrovsky will now use a $10,000 iTunes music card to keep those downloads flowing on his new 20-inch iMac computer, and listen to his favorite tunes on one of the 10 60GB iPods.'"
$10,000 / $0.99 = 10,101.01, so he's going to have to pay $0.98 of his OWN MONEY if he wants to actually claim that .01 of a song.
DON'T BELIEVE APPLE, if they offer you $10,000 open your eyes and see it's a SCAM to get YOUR MONEY!
Hardly lucky. He paid for a Coldplay song and is probably comatose now. No number of iPods will wake him up.
This leaps to mind when I found out that the Billionth song was a Coldplay song:
David: You know how I know that you're gay?
Cal: How? Cuz you're gay? and you can tell who other gay people are.
David: You know how I know you're gay?
Cal: How?
David: You like Coldplay.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Downloadable music isn't a viable music model.
I think the term 'audiophile' does not fit here. Audiophiles buy expensive HiFi equipment and don't listen to 128kbit AAC from the Apple store. Especially as many people can hear the encoding artefacts on good equipment. But I must admit that I cannot hear the difference with the crappy earbuds that came with my iPod.
Beyond the iTMS certificate, the iPods and iMac, the prize includes a 4 year scholarship created in the winner's name to a "world renowned institute of music" selected by Apple. So, while all the loot he gets is nice, he's not the only winner. Actually, given the price of tuition, he's not even the biggest winner.
Everyone else - 100,000
Soul Amp (My Band) 6
Actually I am stoked about iTunes/Mp3 and iPods....as a indie musician, self producing with a home grown label, iTunes allows us to collect 65 cents per song. Direct to the the band...
Unfortunately without the big money for PR and payola (yes Apple probably takes payola too...despite claims otherwise, I think they call them marketing fees or "services") We are relegated to being just 13 songs in a sea of millions. Thus sales have been slow. But...that can change in a heartbeat as anyone who listens to music can see.
So...feel free to scope iTunes and search for Soul Amp...I need another guitar amplifier (VOX Ac-30 or Matchless) and a leslie for our 1958 Hammond M3 organ.
Also for people who refuse to pay for music until guilt finally takes hold after scamming every song ever recorded, we have tracks of tunes we are working on for our next disk on our website. Hep yer self...I say whay wait until a rash breaks out from the guilt of free downloading...by indie music from iTunes. The bands actually get the bulk of the money. 65 cents of 99 is pretty damn good. Most bands that get mp3 blogged are on iTunes.
http://soul-amp.com/
Poor guys owning razorback servers probably hit the mark long ago. And instead of fame they got closed.
Oh wait.
my sstream of consciousness
the billionth song was Coldplay i.e. someone cool (i suppose still) and "hip", what a shame it wasn't Uncle Pete's Rog Tog Bimbo Rambo Band or some horrific 70s country music. I mean, that would not have looked as cool in the press release would it? ;)
Jobs anounced last month that they've sold 42 million iPods, so they've sold on average less than 24 songs per iPod. Even the lowest capacity Shuffle holds 120 songs. If we assume an average capacity of 2GB (500 songs) per iPod (the majority of sales are probably the cheaper low capacity units), less than 5% of the aggregate iPod capacity is filled with iTMS songs.
This seems to contradict the oft repeated claims that the iPod ties you to iTMS, or that iTMS is a major contributor to the iPod's success.
It's the top of the line iMac, and the highest-end Mac with an Intel CPU.
The 10 iPods is weird though. I'd rather have one of the iPod commercial girls.
-mkb