Apple Sells A Million Songs in Debut Week 841
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
Scrameustache writes "According to an Apple press release, the iTunes Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, and over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once.
Those new iPods are selling like hotcakes too..."
Cheap, too (Score:5, Informative)
Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:5, Informative)
If they do that many every week, that is seriously gonna bolster their catalog.
~Philly
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:4, Informative)
That's when new releases come out.
Re:Was I misled? (Score:3, Informative)
In a nutshell, you can play your music on up to three computers, enjoy unlimited synching with your iPods, burn unlimited CDs of individual songs, and burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times each.
You can "authorize" and "de-authorize" individual computers. As for re-purchasing songs, just make a backup on a CD, and you won't have anything to worry about.
Re:they'd have sold a LOT more (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously they aren't having a bad start of it, and they have recieved really great press. I know people who are considering buying macs and ipods based on this.
Re:they'd have sold a LOT more (Score:4, Informative)
Apple has to work out specific legal issues before it can distribute the music to other countries.
International rights Re:they'd have sold a LOT mor (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Putting 1 million songs into perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Note also that Apple doesn't keep the entire $0.99 - about $0.65 of it goes to the record label.
It's important however that this is very high-margin revenue. Apple's cost of sales here is recouping the cost of developing the service, plus the bandwidth, plus the credit card processing fees, plus the cost of having developers maintain the service. This has got to be pretty low compared to pressing CDs to put into cardboard boxes - let alone manufacturing computing machinery.
And Apple plans to roll it out to Windows users later this year - which should increase the revenue stream considerably.
ASA
Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:adding your own album (Score:5, Informative)
TIME: What about independent labels? Will they follow suit?
Jobs: Yes. They've already been calling us like crazy. We've had to put most of them off until after launch just because the big five have most of the music, and we only had so many hours in the day. But now we're really going to have time to focus on a lot of the independents and that will be really great.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,4 48048,00.html [time.com]
Not as laid back as eMusic.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hooray (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3. Profit? (Score:5, Informative)
So far, this is marketed to a group of people:
Who own a Mac
AND Who own iPods
AND live in North America
What is that, 1% of Apples 2% market share?
Once it hits PC's with other players, it could become huge overnight.
Even if the company "only" makes $30 million...
What has happened to the world when making "only" $30 million is a bad thing?
Besides the service only just started last week, normally sales of a new service start out slow and grow as people test the waters and if it's safe, others jump in. There is little word-of-mouth advertising yet. And up till now, who needed an overpriced iPod? Now it seems like a better investment.
If the price of entry for unsigned artists is is the cost of studio time, plus paying Apple for server space there could be MORE alternative artists in the mix. This is assuming the labels haven't locked out the independents.
There is much more good potential in the service than you give it credit for.
Re:Another step in the right direction (Score:2, Informative)
Re:About what I thought (Score:5, Informative)
The price of most albums is $9.99, unless there are fewer than 10 tracks. In that case, the total for the album is adjusted down. The remaining case is for "double CDs" which typically cost 2*$9.99
Now, please quit with the "N_songs * $1 > cost_of_album" foolishness.
There is room for improvement with the selection. That having been said, the experience is very pleasant and purchases are smooth and easy.
The REAL accomplishment is that Apple has apparently figured out how to do Credit Card Micropayments [rentzsch.com].
DeanT
Re:And in other news (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/04/20030429
or a different perspective... (Score:2, Informative)
Once Apple rolls out the international, and Windows versions of the service (and you can bet they WILL be released in that order) takings look set to rocket.
AND the AAC files are locked to YOUR Macs (Score:4, Informative)
BUT the AAC files you buy from Apple are "locked down" to your Macs (you can authorize up to three Macs to play your music), so sharing them is of "limited value", to say the least.
AND all the files you buy from Apple are watermarked with YOUR name/e-mail address -- not exactly the kind of thing that makes you eager to put them up on the public p2p networks.
Yes, you can burn the AACs as plain audio onto a blank CD-R, and then re-rip and re-encode them as MP3s and then manually re-tag them, but as a file-conversion technique, this process takes a lot of time. And uses up an awful lot of plastic, too.
Apple's done a pretty good job of making it "appropriately difficult" for you to share the music you've bought with the entire planet. Now if only I could play those AACs on my Archos Jukebox, or in my car, or
-Mark
Re:Why did it work? (Score:5, Informative)
If Apple is "good" for bundling applications and not giving consumers the choice (for example, the music purchasing ONLY works with iTunes), then why is Microsoft "bad" for including IE and Windows Media Player with the OS? And can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft began selling music inside Windows Media Player? Slashdot would be screaming about the monopoly.
The difference is that one company is an illegal monopoly, convicted of antitrust violations, and has a history of using its monopoly power to eliminate all competition in areas it enters with new products, whereas the other company is a small niche competitor that poses no threat to dominate the personal computer market and stifle innovation.
It may not be an ideal world, but them's the breaks.
Re:One thing I find suprising (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Microsoft will win (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
'nuff said!
Re:Hooray (Score:5, Informative)
That comment is so amazingly ill-informed, everybody here is a little dumber for having read it.
The RIAA != the record labels. Yes, they have spent a lot of their resources fighingting Napster, Kazaa, etc., on behalf of the labels, but it also represents almost everybody else in the music recording industry, including artists. In addition to enforcing copyrights, they help establish industry standards (such as that little pre-amp that goes into turntables... okay, younger /.ers might need to ask their fathers what a turntable is.) Saying that this will hurt them is like saying that putting a dent in Sony's hardware sales will somehow hurt the IEEE.
Furthermore, all of the music sold on the iTunes Music Store is licensed, and those license fees are managed by... guess who? That's right, the RIAA.
If this takes off, it might kill your local record store (if Best Buy had not done so already) but it will not make the RIAA go away.
Re:Here's why... (Score:2, Informative)
And of course "most of those files sold were sold to Mac users" because iTMS is only available to iTunes-Users, and iTunes ist until now still mac-only.
Use strings {aacfile} | grep. Or just Get Info! (Score:5, Informative)
There's a less invasive way to demonstrate that the m4p file contains the name/address of the purchaser: buy a song and e-mail the file to a friend who also has a Mac and iTunes4. When they double-click it open, they will be prompted to "authorize" their computer to play this song -- and the text of the prompt includes the e-mail address of the original purchaser, and prompts for their password. That the files contain the identity of the purchaser is not really a secret, especially given that it displays it prominently in the password challenge dialog box when m4p files are moved to a new computer. I found this the first time when my wife mailed me some songs she had bought, and I had to ask her to come over to my computer and enter her password.
But the easiest way to see that the songs contain the purchaser's name is this: open iTunes, click on a song you've purchased, and choose Get Info... and there's your name!
-Mark
PUTTING THIS IN CONTEXT: 1 million sales is.... (Score:5, Informative)
an that is just to apple user and no one else. imagine if this had been world wide.
On the otherhand 1 million sales is a tiny drop in the record sales bucket. if there are 1 million songs sold that's less than 100,000 albums sold. which means over the course of a year that will mean about a million album sold if they can sustain this pace. that's trivial. how many times a year does a artist release an album that goes "platinum"? seems to me they are many every year, some from each record label. thus if apple sustains this pace it will only contribute a single platinum album. Of course there may be a large multiplier effect if the profit margins on this are higher/lower than normal album sales.
What this really shows is how utterly insignificant all of the the other on line music sales were prior to this. they didn't even register: a single mega-record store in NY city could outsell all of the annual online music in a good day prior to apple's involvment. likewise selling CDs by mail also vastly exceeded this market.
heck AOL sent out more of their free trial disks than that!
on the otherhand, once this hits the rest of the world and once this hits the windows world. now were talking a large dent in the sales of music online. again remeber their may b eprofit margin mulitpiers too. this will be true in places that yearn for "pop" music but dont have such good access to music stores as in the US. likewise, world artists will be able to crack the US market if apple lets in lables that lack US distribution systems.
now lets talk about how intrusive the DRM is. its not bad compared to all previous efforts. you can keep your music on a CD so insome sense you own it. but re-ripping it is supposed to be not so good, and thus since digital music is the only way you will be using music in the future having an unrippable high quality CD is not as good as it seems. Apple's tech knowledge base warns you to deauthenticate your mac before you reformat the disk or sell it. its not clear but it seems to imply that you could lose one of your 3 authentications if you dont.
Apple warns you they are free to change how they authenticate your music when you install it on a new mac any time they wish.
This lack of clarity over the authentication protool has me worried but not hyperventilating.
legitmate questions include:
1)how do I authenticate my music on future macs or ipods if mac sells its music store to someone who either goes out of bussiness or starts charging fees to authenticate. (dont laugh mac switched its bussiness model from free to pay for mac.com and claris works)
2) Someday i'll want to keep my music on my phone, credit- card computer, ring, implant, etc....will future itunes allow me to move music to non-mac music players?
3) if my computer is lost, the mother board dies, my hard disk crashes, or a virus eats it, or my employer seizes it before deauthenticate have I lost one of my authentications?
4) what if I go bankrupt and cant get a visa card. how do I maintain a music store account so I can authenticate?
5) in the future, will legacy macs that cant run the latest OS also not be able to de-authenticate?
As I said I'm not hyperventilating, and like 8-tracks and vinyl I dont have the unreasonable expectation that I wont want to replace my music media in the future. but I dont want to be forced to because say apple goes out of the music bussniess.
and yes I realize I can make an audio CD but its not the same as having bought a CD in the store since the store bought CD will rip to higher audio quality for use in digital players (and I predict in the future all useful players are going to be digital-- there wont be many CD players except as ripping devices)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
Really?? Then why am I sitting in the building right now, working away?
Apple's G4 desktop/server manufacturing in Cork is still running along. In fact, I was out on the production floor 5 minutes ago .. :-)
BTW - guess where the European support centre is? Cork, Ireland.
Yes and no... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Informative)
You're probably thinking of PCB manufacturing, which got closed a few years back.
Did you know that Lisas were also built here? Some of the folks around here have been here 20+ years and can remember the days ... there are still pics of the ][ and the ][e still on the walls here. It's a cool place to work.
Re:PUTTING THIS IN CONTEXT: 1 million sales is.... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I would be happy if they allowed you to download it in .wav format so you could make "perfect" cds and have the ability to only do one lossy compression to convert to various formats, but I don't see that happening in the near future.
You're OT. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:About what I thought (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I asked the author of the article, Jonathan Rentzsch, what he thought, and he wrote back to clarify:
So there you have it. Interesting stuff, I guess.
yours
Re:Tidbits and the future of iTunes Music Store (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have children, but in order to keep myself from making too many impulse buys, I did enable the shopping cart feature. Now, in order to buy something, I have to add it to the cart, then go to the cart and purchase it.
Additionally, when I attempted to purchase the song I wanted, I had to enter my password. There was an option to store the password for me, but I left it unclicked. (Like I said, trying to prevent too many impulse buys.)
This seems like it would be the ideal setup for someone with children. The account is set up, and the children can browse the store, and even add stuff to the shopping cart. However, the parent would hopefully still have to type in the password (and therefore know about the music being purchased) before the transaction is completed.
Re:AAC questions (Score:4, Informative)
Software for macs, in general, has a much lower rate of piracy than software for PCs. I personally suspect this is the case because a bigger fraction of Apple's customers are grown-ups rather than 'l33t h4x0r5. I suspect that has a lot to do with how His Steveness got the Big 5 to go along with this. I actually suspect that ITMS tracks won't find their way to p2p in droves, as some of the naysayers say will happen.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)
Secondly, the albums are priced at $10! How the hell can you people not know this yet? There are hundreds of posts pointing out that you can buy albums as a whole for less than the cost of buying all 10+ tracks individually! Learn the facts before you criticize!
The files are a copy of a copy? Actually, they're digitally remastered versions of the songs, specially made for ITunes MS. Besides, even if they were a copy of a copy, a digital copy is perfect and suffers no degradation in recopying, so I could have a 1000th generation copy that's as good as the first.
As far as the restrictions go, there are none that I actually notice. I can burn as many CDs as I want, listen to my collection on my computer, my ipod, and my girlfriend's computer and ipod. Since I think p2ping music is immoral, I don't care that these are useless to kazaa users.
My ideal is also cheaper and higher quality, but that doesn't make this a great service. It's worth it to me. The only thing I find really troublesome is that if you haven't backed up your computer and it crashes, you (apparently, I'm not sure on this) can't re-download purchased tracks for free.
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:5, Informative)
I love Hamburgers - Re:What Am I Missing? (Score:4, Informative)
There are about 5 billion [restaurant.org] burgers sold each year in the US -- Suggesting a subsidy of $55 Billion.
The total governement agriculture budget in 2002 was $18.6BB [gpo.gov], which means the chicken, hog, wheat, and soy bean producers are being completely ripped off!
Heck, McDonalds and Wendy's together have about $4.5 BB in revenue (yahoo finanace), including international sales.
Bottomline: your statistic makes no sense.
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:2, Informative)
That correction probably made this a more substantial update than future "New Music Tuesdays," at least until they start negotating with larger indies.
Re:$.99 for low quality DRM files?????? (Score:1, Informative)
$.99 a song means you are spending the equivalent of $15-$20 a CD
No, CDs are $9.99.
Next, you can't use them like CDs because they are protected
Yes you can, because you can just burn CDs from iTunes
crash your system, lose all your music.
Not if you back it up. If your house burns down you lose all your CDs unless you have them insured.
You are paying top dollar for crap.
Wrong, you obviously haven't heard any of the music.
Sorry but I'm not buying anything from Apple or anyone else at these prices with these restrictions.
I'm guessing it's because you'd rather just continue stealing music from the artists.
Re:$.99 for low quality DRM files?????? (Score:2, Informative)
Bitrate is 128, 256, etc kilo bit per second (kbps).
These two has absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can have MP3 files with 44 KHz sample rate and 96 kbps. Or you can have 11Khz with 320 kbps.
The only thing that you can definitely tell is if any of these numbers go down, the sound quality suffers. Example:
44.1kHz, 128Kbps is better than 22KHz, 128kbps
and
44.1kHz, 256kbps is better than 44.1KHz, 128 kbps.
Think about it this way:
The horsepower rating and the torque rating of an engine is not related (per say), but it is "stronger" if both of those numbers are high, right?
Re:Lovely! (Score:2, Informative)
No link is necessary, but please leave my name in.
Re:Use strings {aacfile} | grep. Or just Get Info! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Re-rip quality is So-So. (Score:1, Informative)
I dont know how the authorization works.
eventually i suppose there may be a decss like program for it. but maybe not since the authorization challenge is remote and not fixed like on dvds. it may be unbreakable.
apple is free to change how they do the authorization. thus whether or not you can get a key for a non-apple machine is up to them. at this time. no.