iTunes Sales 'Collapsing'

Alien54 writes to tell us The Register is reporting that based on reported revenues this year iTunes sales are plummetting. From the article: "Secretive Apple doesn't break out revenues from iTunes, but Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good. While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring's rebound wasn't repeated this year."

Comments

Must just be the majors. The indies are thriving.

[linuxbaby]

Here in the land of the truly independent artists, iTunes sales have almost DOUBLED. iTunes is paying our clients almost a million dollars a MONTH in sales, now. (My company is one of the back-end digital distributors of audio to iTunes, Rhapsody, EMusic, etc.)

I feel like this is the same story as "CD sales are declining!" The whole time you've heard that in the news for the past 6 years, physical CD sales for small independent artists has shot WAY up.

It's like you were looking at one of those stock charts that compares two different companies' stocks. The big famous artists would be that stock whose value has fallen from $100/share to $70/share. But the independent (mostly unknown) artists are like a $1 stock that is now at $5. It's more newsworthy to talk about the big visible stock falling, but the real story down here is in the huge boost that the indies have gotten from improved distribution / availability.

Check out this visual / geographic metaphor, too.

DRM and the improved iPod alternatives

[ZP-Blight]

When there was only the iPod as a really good portable player, iTunes was the only game in town. Now when you can get decent quality alternatives, interoperability is becoming a much bigger issue and DRM is like a doorstop not letting anyone in.

And when people can't get into a particular venue, they'll look elsewhere. And science bless the internet, there's a lot to choose from these days.

I use a gift card

[Derling Whirvish]

I use a gift card. Is that tracked like the credit card sales?

More to it than perhaps that

[moriya]

I think there's more to the declining sale than just a release of iTunes 7.0. I'm no expert on how things are going but it seems Apple is expanding a bit too much as to what they offer in the online store. First, we had just plain ol' music. And that's fine given the iPod can only play music. Then it expanded to photos and then videos. Soon the store offered some music videos... then TV episodes... and now movies...

Maybe it's because of other things... but my feeling and opinion is that Apple should have stuck with music overall instead of expanding into selling music videos, TV shows, and movies.

Re:The Register

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The Register is not exactly a trustworthy news source. Think of it as the supermarket tabloid of Technology News.

The Register and the Inquirer (founded by the creator of the Register after losing a power struggle at the Register) never sign NDAs. That means that they rarely get the inside scoop. But, it leaves them completely free to report whatever they dig up, whenever they dig it up.

So, you have your choice - Press Release journalism from places like Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, etc or "You'll know it as soon as we know it" from places like The Reg and The Inq.

Pick your poison. I choose the later - better to get it wrong by accident than by some PR flack's direction.

Re:Why buy the cow?

[stewbacca]

Legitimate users of iTunes have always confounded me. What with the way they dress and their holier-than-thou attitude.

Not quite sure I'm holier than anybody, but I simply can't stand the wasted hours trying to find good (illegal) copies of music and tv shows, and weeding through all the porn/spam/malware, when I can avoid the whole fiasco by paying a couple bucks. I don't know what you are worth, but saving time and ending up with a legitimate and decent enough quality copy is worth the $1 to me.

Instead of blowing us off as some elitist snob iTunes lovers, why not consider that money isn't always a huge factor for some people? The convenience alone is worth the price of entry.

The world outside the US

[skurken]

iTunes is treating the world outside the US like an unwanted stepchild. Many of the records that are available in the US shop and which are available on CD here in Europe cannot be bought from the iTunes Store. So, what do they expect me to do? I bought a lot of music from iTunes when the store came to Sweden in the first place, but when even such main stream things as a Disney soundtrack isn't available outside the US, it is no wonder people are heading back to the torrent sites (or record stores for that matter).

Re:Here's your explination:

[Lumpy]

People are lazy. People are stupid. People do stupid and lazy things.

Yup, a Senior and her parents at my daughters high school tried to SUE another student for the cost of all her music on her ipod because he erased her ipod in class as a joke.

The funny part is people ARE most certainly stupid, they don't even understand that plugging the ipod back into the computer will load all the music back on. These are really rich business executives and their child. Too stupid to understand, too lazy to even take a couple of minutes and read or even plug the stupid thing back in and watch it start automatically. (I guess their time as well as their childs time is EXTREMELY valuable)

Says a lot about the state of intelligence in the world.

BTW: it took their lawyer to explain to them the extremely complex operation of the Ipod before they understood what others told them many times.