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iTMS Moving Up The Sales Charts

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 26, 2005 05:33 AM
from the lots-of-lost-fans dept.
Businesses Media Media (Apple) Music Apple
Kyusaku Natsume writes "According to the NPD Group, Apple's iTunes Music Store has sold more music than Tower Records and Borders in the U.S., based on sales and download figures for July, August, and September." From the article: "At seventh equal in the chart was iTunes, up seven places on the same period last year. Both Tower Records and Borders slipped a place to seven and nine respectively. Russ Crupnick, music and movies industry analyst for NPD, said he would not be surprised if iTunes was to continue to climb the charts, especially in the run-up to Christmas when iPods are high on many present lists."
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  • Chipmunks (Score:4, Informative)

    by aedan (196243) on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:37AM (#14118019) Homepage
    Well my kids enjoy the Chipmunks I got last week and I couldn't find it in a normal shop.

    aedan

  • Good news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xfletch (623022) on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:44AM (#14118034) Homepage
    But the reason I don't buy music there is that if I am spending that much cash, I want to own something more concrete. What if my computer is lost, or the data corrupted? With a CD I can always re-rip, but with just the MP3 file it would be gone forever...

    Why not have a system where once I own a song, I own it in perpetuity, and can download it again whenever I want?

    I wonder when the first lawsuit over consumer rights and ownership of 'lost' music files will be?

    • Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rxke (644923) on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:57AM (#14118065) Homepage
      What if your CD is lost, or scratched? You expect to get a shiny new one at the store you bought it from?
      • An expense is incurred in reproducing a physical object. Not so in duplicating a downloadable MP3.

        • Re:Good news (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I'm sorry, but bandwidth may not be expensive, but it's not free either. It may be cheaper than furnishing a physical copy, but there is still a cost assosiated with each song download that they have to pay with the not-so-large portion of each 99c that they receive. Allowing customers to re-download missing files simply would not pay off in the end.
          • Allowing customers to re-download missing files simply would not pay off in the end.

            That is quite a bold statement. Perhaps the promise of permanent ownership and free future downloads would further increase consumer confidence in ITMS and significantly increase sales. Bandwidth costs would be easily offset against further sales, and with bandwidth becoming cheaper the long term costs of future downloads will become increasingly insignificant. Alternatively Apple could make a small charge for bandwidth co

            • Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Tim C (15259) on Saturday November 26 2005, @07:03AM (#14118202)
              Bandwidth costs would be easily offset against further sales

              That is also quite a bold statement, given that you have no data for the likely number of repeat (no-cost) downloads. If the number is high enough, then no number of extra sales will cover it.

              (Note that I'm not saying that that's *likely*, just that it's *possible*)
            • Re-downloads are, to be perfectly honest, a negligable cost. I pay my 79p (UK), download the track, and it stays on my hard-disk until something catastrophic happens (My HDD falls over or my system is stolen, for example). I may re-download it once or twice a year.

              Napster does a good job of this. Purchases are stored centrally, and can be re-downloaded to any one of my three authorised machines. The major draw of Napster seems to be that the music is in fact streaming unless specifically downloaded, and the
      • Um, didn't Sony promise to replace all our damaged CDs as part of their case against a Playstation modder in Europe.

        Part of their argument as to why there is no legitimate reason to play burnt CDs, was that the publisher will replace any CDs that get damaged, so there is no need to keep a back-up, (and therefore, no need to mod one's playstation to enable the use of such back-ups).

        • Re:Good news (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Rxke (644923) on Saturday November 26 2005, @06:22AM (#14118127) Homepage
          Sorry, I should have been more elaborate... I ment also to point out you could duplicate your mp3's to CD's, DVD's or another disk, but as you point out, it isn't always that straightforward either legally or technically (DRM) which is *not* a good evolution. It's *still* possible, though. But it's a slippery slope. interesting years ahead, will music become more 'free' or will we be chased like villains more and more? BTW, I never considered buying mp3s, as on iTunes, I can't imagine to pay for a DRMmed file that's not very high quality, to boot. I'm a typical headphones listener, and even through crappy A/Ds you hear a serious difference...

          • Re:Good news (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            You've obviously never sampled iTunes offerings. I am an almost exclusive headphone user. Pretty much all of the 128-192k MP3s floating around various sites and networks are next to crap, definitely not worth paying money for. iTunes uses high-quality AAC, not MP3. While I will never claim the AACs to be indistinguishable from a CD or DVD-Audio (someone will always be able to pick out something, given enough time), they definitively cannot be described as "low-quality".
            • Well.... i listened to the 'preview samples' on iTunes, and they sounded... strange, esp complex, 'noisy' stuff, like soundscapes etc. I asked around, and apparently these are the same quality as the 'full' versions, but I'm still not certain about that. i don't think i've got particularly good hearing, after all i'm 35, and spent some years in a band (louder! What? LOUDER! Ah....)but still, music I know quite inimately (like stuff I used to listen to again and again and... since the mid 80's, sounds diffe

          • Appropriate Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

            by MisterSquid (231834) on Saturday November 26 2005, @09:00AM (#14118445)

            I can't imagine to pay for a DRMmed file that's not very high quality, to boot. I'm a typical headphones listener, and even through crappy A/Ds you hear a serious difference...

            I'm enough of an audiophile that the high range tinniness in mp3s bugs me but not enough of one to know what "crappy A/Ds" are. I also agree that it's a bit of lump to pay money for a low-quality AAC/mp3. Sometimes when I get turned on to a new act, I preview on iTunes and then order from half.com. In fact, that's pretty much what I do for eighty to ninety percent of my music.

            However, I have purchased maybe forty songs from iTMS and have received from friends maybe several hundred 128 kbps AACs/mp3s, and I notice a gigantic difference when I listen to those files on a pair of regular speakers/headphones and when I listen to those files using a pair of <BRANDNAME> in-ear canal phones.

            For example, I have a pair of Sennheisers and listening to low-quality files on them is an awful experience. I also have a pair mid-range floor speakers and listening to low-quality audio files on them practically makes my ears bleed. But the <BRANDNAME> canal-phones provide a very different experience. I'm afraid to say "good," but that's pretty much what listening to AAC and mp3 files using those canal-phones is like. Even tracks with a wide dynamic range (yeah, I'm a child of the 70s) sound really good.

            I guess this a long way of saying that the hardware you use to play low-quality music files makes all the difference in the world. Playing cheap tracks on high-quality hardware not optimized for compressed music just plain sucks. On the other hand, paying a bit of a premium for appropriate hardware might surprise your ears. I'm glad I received my canal-phones as a gift since they run about a quarter of the price of a new iPod (the high-end ones cost much more than even the top-of-the-line iPod), but that very unpretentious piece of hardware (black instead of mug-me-white cords) makes all the difference in the world.

            • Ack, that should of course have been D/A (digital to analog ) converters. And coincidentally, I use Sennheisers, heehee. Good point. Sooo.... After finding out that paying a bit more for a good pair of headphones in the mid-80's makes a huuuuge difference in listening experience, twenty years later I discover that paying a bit less might actually do the same.... *confused/amused grin*
    • Why not have a system where once I own a song, I own it in perpetuity, and can download it again whenever I want?

      Hey, I agree with you, and the whole point of digital distribution is that this is entirely reasonable. But the market has momentum, including momentum in ideas, which means that music sellers just don't have to do this yet.

      CUSTOMER: Man, my little brother used my favourite Vanilla Ice CD for target practice! Can I have another one? I already paid for it, before, like.
      SALES GUY: (*WTF?!!*) Uh

    • Back up your data! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Vandil X (636030) on Saturday November 26 2005, @06:40AM (#14118156)
      No, seriously.

      If you do anything remotely important with your computer (entertainment included), then you should be doing regular back ups.

      Restoring iTunes music and video files from a backup set of DVD-Rs or an external hard disk is almost effortless. If you value your electronic purchases (and other data) that much, you'll back it up.

      Now as for being able to play your DRM'd files in 20 years, you might want to transcode or do like most people did when going from VHS to DVD: re-purchase in the new format.

      • Re:Back up your data! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Blakey Rat (99501) on Saturday November 26 2005, @03:32PM (#14119998)
        Not to mention that iTunes *constantly* bothers you to back up, and makes back ups brain-dead simple. (You can just set the CD burning to "music files", hit select all, and hit burn. It'll fill each CD/DVD with as many tracks as fit and ask for the next one in turn. Or, even easier, just copy your ~/music/itunes directory onto an external HD or DVD.
    • But the reason I don't buy music there is that if I am spending that much cash, I want to own something more concrete. What if my computer is lost, or the data corrupted? With a CD I can always re-rip, but with just the MP3 file it would be gone forever...

      huh? what if your CD is lost, or the surface scratched. exactly the same thing, you don't get it back. it's gone. it's lost forever.

      Either the iTMS download or a ripped MP3 from the CD is copyable, and able to be backed up an infinite amount of times on an

    • Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)

      by the_Pnut (894120) on Saturday November 26 2005, @10:05AM (#14118653)
      Have you ever tried this?

      I called the tech support number on iTunes and told them that the hard drive on my computer failed, and that I lost all my songs. The lady I talked to spent 5 minutes with me "refreshing" my account. At the end I opened iTunes, clicked on advanced-> check for purchases, and then all of the songs I had bought from iTunes re-downloaded. That didn't help for all the songs I had that I did not buy from iTunes, but apple was very easy to deal with, and allowed me to "re-own" the music I had bought from them. Now I run a back up script every week, cause it's just easier, but apple definitely lets to download your music again if you wish too.

      Also, if you want something more "concrete" you can burn from apple's lossless format to a CD, and then put the CD in your rack.

      • Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vought (160908) on Saturday November 26 2005, @06:35AM (#14118145)
        Sure my old library was there but it was drmed and grayed out. I tried to remerge and set myself as teh new owner of the ipod since I tried all options. Itunes deleted about $400 worth of music and wiped my whole collection clean. :-(

        Here's an article [about.com] that details the several options on each platform for solving exactly the problem you found yourself with.

        You could argue that Apple should provide a "Restore from iPod" provision in iTunes, or a low-cost "Redownload all my shit" option, but wouldn't have just been easier to Google the answer to your $400.00 problem or to back up your system in the first place?

        Complaining on Slashdot is easier that using Google, I guess.

        • Hey, can I solicit some advice from you?

          I just sent my daughter a nano for Christmas, all loaded up her MP3s from her old computer.

          If she plugs the iPod into her new computer Christmas morning, is she liable to erase all the songs on it? Any special instructions I should send her? (Other than: install the drivers before connecting ipod! :)

          Thanks,
          m/m
          • Yes - if you use google, you might find an answer to your problem and so actually have no excuse not to do something about it. Complaining on slashdot needs no follow-up action.

      • Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)

        by gnasher719 (869701) on Saturday November 26 2005, @08:25AM (#14118373)
        >> Sure my old library was there but it was drmed and grayed out. I tried to remerge and set myself as teh new owner of the ipod since I tried all options. Itunes deleted about $400 worth of music and wiped my whole collection clean. :-(

        Oh well, you should have asked someone who knows how to use a computer first.

        Here is how it works: Step 1: Make copies of your songs on data CDs or data DVDs. Doesn't matter that they are DRM'd, you can copy the files without any problems, you just can't _play_ them on a different computer. Step 2: Unregister your computer with iTMS (not fatal if you forget this step). Step 3: Reformat your system (since that is what you were doing anyway). Step 4: Copy all the DRM'd files back to your computer. Step 5: Register that computer again with iTMS if needed. Step 6: Should you run out of registrations (you can register five computers), tell Apple to unregister _all_ your computers, then go back to Step 4.
      • when Tiger came out I reformatted my system and had no trouble at all with my iTunes songs. I followed the instructions.

        the only slight difficulty was when my Windows machine decided to crash and I couldn't get it to boot properly so that I could run iTunes and deregister the machine. I went through Apple's website form and they deregistered it for me. (and even if I couldn't have deregistered it, that would only have been one of my five simultaneous registrations out of order.)

  • The run-up to Christmas? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KingSkippus (799657) * on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:48AM (#14118042) Homepage Journal
    he would not be surprised if iTunes was to continue to climb the charts, especially in the run-up to Christmas when iPods are high are many present lists.

    The run-up to Christmas? Wouldn't it be more likely that it will climb after Christmas, after said iPods are opened and starting to be used?

  • All the manoevering you're seeing and hearing from competitors, FUD and disinfo and legitimate complaints, is because the people in the middle of this new-take-on-an-old-market have the long view.

    The next retail high-season, pshaw. Think twelve years from now. Apple competitors in the media-hub-style emerging markets have puckered anuses. Meanwhile it's full steam ahead towards full vertical integration at Apple.

    It's an old saw by now, but since Sony isn't there already (and they could've been, nearly), J

  • new business practises (Score:4, Insightful)

    by know1 (854868) on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:50AM (#14118052)
    i have a friend whose band is on itunes, they are called yonni. they have no record deal at the moment, but recorded the songs in a studio themselves. maybe in the future companies like apple will replace traditional record companmies entirely. would be nice, no dirty executives and slimy contracts, just the musician and the record store, how it should be. watch record company executives everywhere get worried...

  • Hopefully everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2005, @05:51AM (#14118053)
    ...who has said "If someone can get something for free, they sure as hell won't buy it!" will shut up now. A large proportion of people - certainly enough to keep a business afloat - will pay for things by default, but get put off due to "value additions" such as draconian DRM or the general attitude from most media companies that all of their customers are thieves*. Apple has grasped that it is not necessarily cost that deters people from buying but inconvenience, and so by stream-lining the process of payment and delivery so that it is almost imperceptible - so, in fact, the customer can almost forget that they are "buying" anything at all! - they have managed to shore up such massive sales as to be an embarrassment to the RIAA. We see a similar thing with, of all things, mobile-phone ringtones - massive quantities are available online for free, but the fact that buying a ringtone is so much easier has led to this unfathomable market [if you had told me that such crappy "products" as ringtones would have been even mildly profitable a few years back, I'd have thought you were mad!] raking in billions per year.

    * A recent example of this - I liked "Batman Begins" very much, and thought it was sufficiently well-written and directed that I'd like to reward the makers by buying a copy, even if it's not something I'm necessarily going to watch again enough to justify the purchase. Upon it's arrival, I opened the box and the first thing that fell out was not a nice, slick inlay, but a anti-piracy leaflet from piracyisacrime.com. Rolling my eyes, I placed the DVD into my player and settled down to watch the film, and what do I see? No slick animated menus, not even the boringly superfluous trailers for films I'm never going to watch, but a fucking commercial equating "piracy" with car-theft!. It looks like it was supposed to be unskippable, too, but thankfully my player does not have the "prevent the owner from skipping stuff he doesn't want to see" "value addition". The lunacy of this is astounding - it is as if PickleWorld(TM) created a huge, terrifying banner equating pickle-theft with murder to be placed in their stores, but instead of putting it over the side-exit or whichever mode of exit is usually employed by the serial pickle-thief, they put it over the checkout where it can only be seen by paying customers!

    FUCK YOU PICKLEWORLD!

    --SSJ

  • well... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by know1 (854868)
    although they may have drm at least they don't have rootkits. record company shot itself in the foot there. looks like the slow and drawn out death of the record companies is inevitable
    • You posted a valid comment and I would have modded it back up if I'd had points.

      I've had the same thought myself - the rootkit in CDs definitely makes CDs less valuable than iTMS download for those of us who like listening to music on our computers.

      Even though Sony backed down this time, I'm sure their next effort will be almost as obnoxious, so it makes me no longer trust the CD medium.

      D
  • A few days ago there was a story about how iTunes is expected to change its 99 cent flat pricing in the next year; in that article the following claim is made, "EMI said today that digital sales, made up 4.9% of the company's sales in the last six months, up from 2.1% a year ago." (http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itune s -cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html [forbes.com]). How can iTunes be so high in one chart, yet only account for less than 5% of EMI's total sales in the same period. From what I understand, EMI
    • >> How can iTunes be so high in one chart, yet only account for less than 5% of EMI's total sales in the same period.

      According to the article, Apple is number seven in sales. It is quite possible to be number seven with only 5 percent of sales. Someone might have more accurate numbers, but I think in computer sales Apple is number 5 with about 5%, and Dell is number one with 18%, so Apple could easily be number seven in record sales with only five percent. Depends on how big the six bigger ones are (
  • So Apple has picked off the easy targets. Still a LONG way to go till wallmart should be worried.

    (and wasn't the original press release [npd.com] 5 days ago?)

  • <pedantic> (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2005, @06:49AM (#14118173)
    Here is the press release [npd.com] by the NPD Group (those who did the study).
    In Q3, the top 10 retailers were as follows (note: numbers within parentheses denote retailer unit-sales position in Q3 2004):

    1. Wal-Mart (1)
    2. Best Buy (2)
    3. Target (3)
    4. Amazon.com (4)
    5. FYE (10)
    6. Circuit City (Tied for 5)
    7. Apple\iTunes (14)
    8. Tower Records (Tied for 7)
    9. Sam Goody (Tied for 5)
    10. Borders (9)
    This clearly has iTunes at position 7, Tower records at 8 (at 7 last year), and Borders at 10 (at 9 last year). Yet the Guardian says: "Both Tower Records and Borders slipped a place to seven and nine respectively." (No, that's from seven and nine).

    I'm also somewhat hesitant about accepting these figures. Online, CDBaby [cdbaby.com] nearly outsells Amazon.com, yet it's nowhere to be seen in this chart. It is of course always possible that they're at position 11 or thereabouts (Hey Derek: you reading? Any idea?), but likewise it wouldn't surprise me at all if they'd been completely disregarded, given that they only sell independent artists...

  • Slightly anecdotal... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lpangelrob (714473) on Saturday November 26 2005, @07:27AM (#14118254)
    Interesting. I had my 3-4 months of initial interest and purchasing, but that was about a year ago. About then I pretty much just stopped purchasing music, though (except for recently when I decided to start listening to jazz).

    iTunes makes more sense when you're looking for music. I only knew that at Best Buy, I'd look for something and it would take a minute to find the right section, and then another minute to find the right area where the artist theoretically should be, and then another to determine that no, they don't have the CD.

    Stranger still is the fact that some bands STILL refuse to (or their labels prohibit them from) posting all their CDs on iTMS. I'm looking at you, Dave Matthews Band.

    What's the deal with that? Do they intentionally want to lower their sales figures? Or do they still operate in the theoretical haze of "profit margins" for sales that don't exist (iTMS) vs. sales that might exist otherwise (Best Buy, Tower)?

  • Oh, let's just get this over with... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpellino (202698) on Saturday November 26 2005, @07:40AM (#14118277)
    "Apple is the living embodiment of evil because they don't deliver me full quality ogg in a DRM free CD and DVD and and thumbdrive and certainly won't call me in 6 months with my free BluRay / HD because information wants to be free as in air."

    "All digital music is compromised crap anyway, I only listen to each band live in concert in the first city of every tour, 4th row center. Please IM me at "in33dskymil3s247".

    "iPods can't hold a candle to those myriad failed / bankrupt players, but Apple has succeeded because they have managed to emulate MS in their draconian underhanded methods. Fight the power!"

    "Ah, yet more solid proof that Apple will in the ashcan in mere hours - Dvorak is working on revision 37 of his eulogy as we speak - this time for sure!"

  • Just a precursor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bbzzdd (769894) on Saturday November 26 2005, @09:11AM (#14118479)

    Times are changing. People are no longer satisfied paying upwards to $20 USD for physical media which becomes more and more restrictive as time goes by.

    The "free love" people tasted with P2P was a stake in the heart of the physical format. We can't go back to the way things were. People like iTunes because it sucks less than the alternatives. Sure, it's coated with DRM, but at least it's not installing rootkits on your PC.

    Home recording, inexpensive marketing via the internet, and the digital media formats are the trifecta that will strip a lot of undeserving middle-aged record execs of their Diablos.

    The music recording industry is fixing to implode, but what rises from the ashes could be very promising.

  • iTMS is really the only way I shop now (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nbahi15 (163501) on Saturday November 26 2005, @11:12AM (#14118909) Homepage
    When iTunes first came out I bought a song out of novelty, but I already had such a substantial music selection on CD it seemed rather pointless. I primarily listen to indie rock, but recently I have been buying a lot more classical. iTunes is really the only good way to buy classical. Going into Best Buy to discuss Brahms and his Hungarian Dances is pointless, and you can't tell if they are of very good quality until you get them home. In addition to the ability to listen to the music in advance the prices are much better. If you go into a shop with a decent selection of classical music everything starts at $30. I get albums for $9.99 on iTMS. I really hope iTunes becomes more successful because music sales have been something of a racket for so long.

  • Here's the actual list (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats (122034) on Saturday November 26 2005, @12:27PM (#14119205) Homepage
    Here's the actual list [npd.com], with last year's ranking in parentheses:
    1. Wal-Mart (1)
    2. Best Buy (2)
    3. Target (3)
    4. Amazon.com (4)
    5. FYE (10)
    6. Circuit City (Tied for 5)
    7. Apple\iTunes (14)
    8. Tower Records (Tied for 7)
    9. Sam Goody (Tied for 5)
    10. Borders (9)

    This list has some tough implications for the RIAA and its members. None of the top four companies gets most of its revenue from music. They're all very strong companies used to telling their suppliers what prices they want to see. The classic "record store" chains, Tower and Sam Goody, are falling off the list.

    Some of the changes just reflect consolidation in the record store industry. FYE [fye.com] is a classic "record store" chain. It's really Trans World Entertainment [twec.com], the result of mergers between Wherehouse, Record Town, Camelot Music, and Strawberries. Stores in malls carry the FYE brand ("offering a consistent mall-based retailing experience"), while freestanding stores bear the names Wherehouse Music, Coconuts Music & Movies, Strawberries, Spec's, CD World, Streetside Records and Planet Music.

    Also, don't forget that Wal-Mart sells music on-line. [walmart.com] Even if the RIAA can bully Apple into raising the song price for iPods, that's not going to work with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart just won't tolerate suppliers increasing their prices. They'll find other suppliers. Note the growing list of "Wal-Mart exclusives".

    • Re:Who cashes in? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guet (525509) on Saturday November 26 2005, @07:21AM (#14118236)
      Somehow I get the feeling the record companies are the ones cashing in.

      Apple cashes in now on ipods, and later on music when the record companies are obsolete.

      They don't have to worry about margins on music just now so long as it's in profit and growing the market.

      • Re:Who cashes in? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gobbo (567674) <wrewrite@gmai l . c om> on Saturday November 26 2005, @06:29AM (#14118139) Journal
        The music companies get about 68 cent, Apple 28,-. the artists 5,-

        Margins, he said. After bandwidth, administration, credit card charges, server rooms, and development, I'm sure Apple doesn't have too much of that 28 cents left. However, even a 2 penny margin can add up if the numbers are right, and it's used strategically - *wink*.

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