Apple Sells A Million Songs in Debut Week 841
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..."
Hooray (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hooray (Score:5, Insightful)
Even then, does Apple's model adequatly compensate the artist? Does it allow entry for independant artists? Does it even have the potential to work against the RIAA, or will it simply strengthen its grip?
Re:Hooray (Score:5, Funny)
Or something.
Re:Hooray (Score:3, Funny)
I THINK you'll find that the more the RIAA tightens it's grip, the more potential music buyers will slip through its fingers.
Well said Governor Tarkin.. er.. Princess Leia.
I salute you (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I salute you (Score:5, Funny)
Grub, my man, you must be the Slashdot master of one-liners. Your Karma-to-Words-Typed Ratio must be very impressive.
Yes it is.
(Watch this skyrocket to +5 [Funny|Informative|goatse.cx])
Re:Hooray (Score:5, Funny)
graspee
Re:Hooray (Score:3, Informative)
What Am I Missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA reps the companies that get the music into the download -- engineers, producers, designers, and, yes, lawyers -- all of whom need to be paid, and will get their slice. The size of that slice is spelled out in a contract which both parties sign. Is the size of that slice "fair?" I dunno. What percentage of the price of that soda finds its way back to the chemists and bottlers? How many pennies on the cigar dollar get back to the guy rolling the leaves? How many nickels on the Big Mac pricetag work their way back to the cattlerancher? Do we stop consuming these products (and a million others) until we "ger answers?"
Say I'm a small-town chemist who just developed a new flavor -- how do I get my soda bottled and onto the shelves at the 7-11? You mean -- it's not easy?? I can't just pull my truck up to the back of ths store and stock the shelves myself? I have to make a [shudder] DEAL?! Oh, the Injustice!
Is this new venture going to change the world, overthrow evil, and bring about a Glorious Workers' Revolution? No, silly, it's gonna let you download music easily and legally onto your computers and disks. No more or less than it was designed to do.
I've never had a use for Apple, Macs, or Steve Jobs, but my hat is off to them on this.
Re:What Am I Missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't going to hurt the RIAA and bring their downfall. Its going to allow the RIAA to shift their focus by providing a testbed for buying music online in this manner, and its going to show them that it works. In effect, this is only molding the RIAA into something that we all might be able to deal with. But hell, if I can buy my music in this way for all the time to come, I really could care less if the RIAA has a hand in it.
Re:What Am I Missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I know, there's always been that option for the local band. The point here is that most bands, local and otherwise, would rather spend their time focusing on making music, and so make arrangements for other organizations to handle their distribution for them. These distribution organizations have traditionally shied away from online distribution -- until now, and that's a Big Deal.
It's highly likely that artists not signed by any of the companies represented in the RIAA will eventually make their way onto an iTune download. I don't think that heralds the death knell for Big Music any more than the combination of Amazon.com and small-press publishers presaged a demise for the major publishing houses.
Humans have demonstrated a remarkable propensity to consume, and, oddly enough, are proving more than willing to compensate those involved in both the creation and distribution of the consumables.
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:Hooray (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that you are mistaken here. Apple doesn't need any more contracts, since it already has contracts with all five of the major labels, and the independent labels are reportedly itching to get in on it as well! The model has succeeded already, by giving us a way to purchase current music legally and easily electronically. This is a good thing.
Now, as far as the RIAA is concerned, and your comments about artist compensation, a lot remains to be seen. I envision independent artists and smaller labels being able to distribute music much easier through the iTunes Music Store, and offering them potential for success. They could release a few "singles" for free on the Music Store, and then hope that people buy more songs, or the whole album. And since they aren't producing any CDs, they have less overhead, and can get more of the profits. Just a thought on how the future could be bright.
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.
Cheap, too (Score:5, Informative)
And in other news (Score:4, Funny)
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:AND the AAC files are locked to YOUR Macs (Score:3, Interesting)
You can save in your favorite format without actual CD burning:
Boot Linux on your PPC, start MOL with your OSX in X11 window with network activated, run iTunes, listen the file, hook at your xmms and save it in any format xmms supports.
Legally, you should do i
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
Re:And in other news (Score:3, Insightful)
AAC just makes it harder to rip the audio, not impossible. It will take a while for such tools to appear. Also I suspect demand won't be very high since most people will prefer to have their mp3 directly ripped from a cd (AAC is already lossy, decoding and then reencoding only loses more quality).
However, it seems that Apple, unlike the RIAA, gets the po
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
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:PUTTING THIS IN CONTEXT: 1 million sales is.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
'nuff said!
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.
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:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because people over the age of 16 understand that it takes work, time and money to make music, and would be happy to pay a fair price for a product delivered in a manner that they like?
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:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keeping their promise on adding stuff, too (Score:4, Funny)
But that's just a rumor.
Tidbits and the future of iTunes Music Store (Score:5, Interesting)
They also discuss the future of iTunes Music Store, quoting from the article:
Future Moves -- Keep in mind that the iTunes Music Store is a 1.0 release, so there's plenty of room for improvement, such as the following features.
I'd like to see Apple expose the links to every track available in the iTunes Music Store, perhaps along with a new URL scheme that would make it trivial to click a link in a Web browser and jump to the song's listing in iTunes. Utilities would undoubtedly appear to let people build Web pages of their purchased songs for showing friends and other visitors. It appears the necessary bits may already be in place; see the link below.
<http://nslog.com/ archives/ 2003/ 04/ 29/ itms_ links.php [nslog.com]>
Also interesting would be music recommendations via the social information filtering researched at the MIT Media Lab (the Ringo music recommendation project) and then tried (unsuccessfully) in the business world as Firefly Networks. The iTunes Music Store already has Amazon-like "Listeners who bought this also bought" links.
<http://www.acm.org/ sigchi/ chi95/ Electronic/ documnts/ papers/ us_ bdy.htm [acm.org]>
Along the same lines, popularity rankings and user comments would also be welcome, much like those on Amazon.
Providing full liner notes, preferably with lyrics, would undoubtedly help some people decide what to buy. However, I'm sure the contractual issues surrounding lyrics are complex.
I'm fairly unlikely to buy an unknown song based on a 30 second clip. I'd like to see Apple instead stream a low quality version of the entire track. Even better, Apple could create a number of iTunes-based streaming radio stations in different genres. If you like the current (or recent) song, you could click a Buy button to download it instantly.
I gather iTunes users with children are interested in some level of parental control over purchases. Something as simple as password-protection for opening the iTunes Music Store itself would suffice.
There's currently no way to buy music as a gift currently, but it would be nice to be able to buy a song or album for someone and have Apple automatically send them an iCard with the download link.
Realistically, modem users aren't going to be able to use the iTunes Music Store much, but perhaps a future incarnation could offer a mechanism by which Apple would send you a CD containing the AAC files for an additional cost.
Re:Tidbits and the future of iTunes Music Store (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon.com does something amazingly like this. You can purchase the product online and they'll ship you out a shiny disc encoded with high quality audio tracks that you can listen to on virtually any compact disc player. It's really revolutionary. :-/
Re:Tidbits and the future of iTunes Music Store (Score:5, Funny)
About what I thought (Score:5, Insightful)
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:About what I thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, but do they have the Proyecto Mirage CD I've been looking for? How about Synthetik's ADSR? The first Feindflug album? Weena Morloch's KadaverKomplex? Anything by Insurge?
Thanks to economies of scale, the price of CDs are inversely proportional to demand. Which is fine if other people happen to like the music you do, but sucks if they don't.
[TMB]
Re:About what I thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:About what I thought (Score:5, Funny)
they'd have sold a LOT more (Score:5, Insightful)
If they weren't restricting to credit cards with a US billing address. Like VISA isn't the same globally?
Ralf
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:they'd have sold a LOT more (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is fraud prevention. Who's to say you couldn't go on a shopping spree and accumulate 1000 new songs overnight with someone else's credit card? As can be seen from the current RIAA vs. Verizon case, the ISP won't likely help identify the thief in a civil suit, and most credit card companies could care less about fraud prevention in a criminal suit so long as they get their money. And that's just in the US - credit card fraud overseas is much more difficult to trace and prosecute. For now, it's probably just a case of cover-your-ass...
Visa would be quite happy (Score:5, Insightful)
This causes problems online though as customers and territories are now now no longer tied together - you could buy from whichever territory offered the cheapest identical product. One big free market.....nope, couldn't have that, could we? so that's why you need a US Visa.
Proof of brand importance? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not trying to sideline the significance of the success, I'm just questioning why it is really successful. From what I have heard, this is not all that much different than approaches that others took earlier (Didn't eMusic, the popular word among those that don't like iTunes, originally sell per song?).
Alternatively still, maybe the market is just now ready for such a store model as this. Timing is, afterall, very important in delivery of a product to market. Too early can be as devastating as too late.
Why did it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
The secret is in the direct tie to iTunes. It's difficult to overstate how convenient it is to be able to shop for music within your music player as opposed to fiddling with some web-based download service.
This is the kind of thing which Apple's control over hardware, software, and consumer applications together permits it to excel at. What is astonishing is that Microsoft has proved so poor at this kind of coordination.
ASA
Re:Why did it work? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then why do people always protest Microsoft's bundling of browsers, media players, etc with the OS?
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.
Re:Why did it work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, let's look at the browser example. Say I don't like Safari (which most likely will be bundled with OS X 10.3 instead of IE). I am free to trash it and go back to using IE. Can you get rid of the bundled browser in Windows so easily? Nope.
Apple rolls their own software and bundles
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:Why did it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact of the matter is that most Slashdot posters wouldn't know consistancy of opinion if it slapped them round the face with a wet kipper. It's fashionable to like Apple, it's fashionable to dislike Microsoft. The fact that they are just two sides of the same coin is something most would apparently rather ignore.
Reading for comprehension can be fun, in six quick and easy steps!
If you'll go back and actually read what I wrote before the Redmond side of your brain kicked into overdrive, you'll see that I made no judgements one way or the other of the relative "niceness" of either company, or as to what Apple would do if they had 90% of the marketshare in home PCs.
So, just for you, I'll hit the salient points again:
1) Microsoft has been convicted of having an illegal monopoly in the PC market, and using that monopoly to crush competition in that and other markets. Apple has about 5% marketshare, and thus isn't going to be able to use iTunes to bully anyone but themselves into releasing Mac-exclusive products.
2) Microsoft has the power to use an integrated music service to dictate the future of digital music provided over the internet. Apple, as a niche player, does not.
3) It's logical to be concerned with potential anticompetitive results from pretty much anything Microsoft does, based on their market share, market power, and past history. It's not logical to be concerned with anticompetitive results from Apple, as they don't have anywhere near enough power to influence competitors or control a market.
Re:Proof of brand importance? (Score:5, Interesting)
Put simply, it's both. Apple has great brand recognition, marketing muscle and a loyal customer base. But none of that should take away from the fact that this is a significant advance in implimentation.
How? Well, basically the only games in town for legit online music downloading involved one or more of the following onerous "gotchas."
1. Rental of music. That is, you don't pay your monthly subscription, you can't listen to "your" music anymore. At $20 per month, this starts to get pretty stupid. No mystery why this never took off.
2. Over-zealous DRM after downloading. Once the file is on your computer you can't burn a CD. Or you can, but only certain tracks. Or only if you pay an additional fee. Only one CD, please. Etc., etc., etc. Transferring the file to another machine? Hassle. Quibbles about Apple's "Fairplay" DRM technologies notwithstanding, they're lightyears ahead of what came before.
Apple hasn't gotten it 100% right, but they clearly are hitting the 95% mark and one expects the model to be refined further still. Other services have been consistently below the 50% if you ask me. Not that it was their fault! The RIAA basically either owned these downloading services or at the very least severely restricted the terms of the music licenses. That is to say, the RIAA killed those other services before they were born.
One of the greatest achievements of the iTMS isn't the fact that clever Apple engineers came up with a great idea first - hell, everyone knew the basics of what was needed for online music downloading business to be sucessful. But the RIAA wouldn't allow such a model! No, cleverness aside, the great achievement is the fact that the Big Steve managed to convince the record companies that his model was a good idea for them. Obviously they had rejected such liberal, consumer-friendly models countless times before. I'm recalling a quote from the top guy at Sony that said (paraphrasing here!) "I think it was about fifteen seconds after Steve started talking that I decided to license our entire library to him."
"Reality Distortion Field"? Maybe. However he did it, he managed to get the RIAA to swallow a viable music downloading business model. Viable because it contains enough rights for customers for them to put down their hard earned cash and enough controls for content providers to put up their wares.
Re:Proof of brand importance? (Score:4, Interesting)
In riposte to your statement "the popular contender to iTunes seems to be eMusic", that simply isn't true. The contender vs. iTunes is kazaa and edonkey2k. The public will have to decide whether to get its pop music for free via a less-than-perfect distribution system (long queues, bad rips, madonna telling you to eff off) or pay for no queues, good rips, and the music you want. Not that iTunes is perfect either (several bugs in signing up if you already have an account, drm encumbered, relatively small selection). But I have faith that two of those three will clear up, and the third is livable, while the p2p side has had several years to get their act together and replicate napster at it's peak (which was unbeatable in all three areas), but they haven't come close.
All the previous is coming from someone who is a current eMusic member, and has bought stuff from iTunes. I will get much *more* music from eMusic, because when you get right down to it techno is almost all interchangeable so the more you have the better, and you don't have to be *overly* picky about choosing just 'the good stuff'. But when I want to get Coldplay's third album, or REMs next, or whatever, I'll probably use iTunes to do it.
I have no idea if any of this actually answers your root question, I'm just rambling at this point. Thanks for reading this far!
Re:Proof of brand importance? (Score:3, Interesting)
#1. iTunes is a very good way of delivering the music. My wife downloaded an album (Mr. Heartbreak by Laurie Anderson) and in about a minute it started playing while downloading the rest. It downloaded FASTER than it would have taken to rip the music ourself. As my wife said, if you need to get an album for some reason quickly (going to a dance party and you want to bring it) you can download an album and be out the door in 10 minutes (if you have an ipod
adding your own album (Score:5, Interesting)
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]
3. Profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the tracks were all sold as singles (they weren't) and if Apple kept all the money from the sale (they don't) AND if they could keep up their one million songs per week rate (doubtful), then by the end of a year they've made $52 million. Take out administration costs (I have no idea what they are, but I'm guessing they must be fairly significant) and the RIAA's big cut, and I'm guessing Apple would be left with somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million after a year, and that's ONLY if they keep up the sales rate they had in their initial week every week of the year. Sure, $30 million in revenue is nothing to sneeze at, but it's not going to convince anyone that online music sales are worthwhile.
Remember, $30-50 million is equal to the revenue from a couple platinum albums, and isn't enough to finance nearly as many artists as the current model can (keep in mind that every "flop" gets subsidized by hit records). I would expect that if the recording industry were to switch to this model that MORE over-produced pop garbage would be pushed since the dramatically lower revenues would keep the companies from taking many risks with "alternative" artists. And you thought it was bad now...
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:3. Profit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that, while I'm sure they are thrilled to make money on selling music, Apple is a COMPUTER company. All of the hype for the iTunes Music Service is free advertising for the Macintosh. It is sure to help boost sales of Macs, MacOS X 10.2, iPods, and all the other little goodies Apple sells.
It's like the Apple stores, even if the Apple stores or the music business break 100% even, they will still be worth it for
Re:3. Profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well obviously $30mil in profit is nothing to sneeze at. Plus for Apple we're talking about an adjunct to their primary business. I know some others are talking about "replacing" the current model, but Apple would be more than happy to have a reliable $30mil coming in every year.
But one aspect you're missing is, how many more ipods are being sold because of this? How many more Mac "switchers"/converts are being created now? This is just another way for Apple to create market share for themselves by adding value to computers, taking them beyond just generic tools and making them useful for more people (other than surfing of course). Plus, it gets them in bed with the entertainment industry even more. With Steve's association with Pixar and therefore Disney, the next obvious step would be some type of video distribution. I'm not talking general purpose VOD, nope, I'm talking things like kids shows and cartoons, where the demand for high resolutions (and therefore bandwidth) isn't nearly as much as more adult fare.
So overall you can't look at this as a thing upon itself. It is merely part of the bigger picture that Apple to drawing to keep itself significant in the market. Kudos to them.
Re:3. Profit? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't assume they can't keep that rate up. Of course, it may slack off for a while, but bear in mind the service is currently available to only a very, very small segment of the potential market: Apple users (5%) who use iTunes or own an iPod (??%, but certainly less than 100%). When they release their Windows version, it should ramp up sales by at least an order of magnitude. When they get the European and Japanese online, i
Putting 1 million songs into perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
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
I hope this doesn't rescue the recording industry. (Score:5, Interesting)
It blows my mind that Apple has been able to improve on the iPod. As if the original's form factor was too thick (not quite as thick as a deck of cards), they still somehow cut it almost in half.
I played around with the new music service this week. Super impressively done. Having said that, I don't think I'll order any music from it. The record companies have shown themselves to be complete bastards for decades now, in how they screw over the public and the artists. I hate to think that Apple's now riding to this industry's rescue, perhaps only a year or two before the entire industry would go down the crapper. If there was only some way I could use this service with the bulk of the money going straight to the artist, I'd be incredibly enthusiastic about this whole thing.
I'm always thrilled to see Apple succeed at something, since I think they tend to make beautifully designed products. I just hope that this success isn't the event that keeps the parasitic recording industry form withering away.
Re:I hope this doesn't rescue the recording indust (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything which encourages people to purchase music directly by cutting out the retail link can only help artists in the long run. If people get used to this kind of thing, they're much more likely to purchase music from independent artists someday - because independent artists wi
Re:I hope this doesn't rescue the recording indust (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't cut out the retail link though. It simple eliminates your local record store and replaces it with Apple.
If people get used to this kind of thing, they're much more likely to purchase music from independent artists someday - because independent artists will probably never be able to afford to get their CDs into record stores, but it won't be too much trouble for them to get onto download services.
Sure, assuming Apple don't end up with a near monopoly. This kind of thing suffers a classic network effect - can you see people joining 20 or 30 different download services to get their music? No, they'll use the ones that are most convenient - ie the ones that are integrated with their computers. I don't know for sure but I'd bet a lot that Apple won't be allowing eMusic to plug into iTunes anytime soon.
Right now the price Apple charges for getting a track onto this service is about 30-40 US cents, something around that figure. If they become a dominant middle man, who's to say that Apple won't start putting on the squeeze to up the margins just like the big bad old record companies did? They are all shareholder owned at the end of the day.
API (Score:4, Insightful)
(Never gonna happen, I know.)
-jfedor
Success of Apple Music Store .... (Score:3, Funny)
Cupertino, CA - Apple's recent announcement that over 1 million songs had been purchased in the first week of its new music store's existence presents undeniable proof that Apple users will overpay for anything.
More at BBSpot [bbspot.com]
AAC questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Just curious, I don't own a Mac and I stopped using p2p nets.
Re:AAC questions (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
If I had a million dollars (Score:3)
Money can't buy everything, it's true, but it can buy a press release that may impress the idiots who run the music industry.
A million dollars a week is only 52 million dollars a year - that is CHUMP CHANGE. How much of that do you think went to the music industry? It's gonna take money, a whole lotta spendin' money, to make it worthwhile for the distribution oligopoly to embrace this.
You know what I call that? (Score:3, Insightful)
And a bute rebuff against what the **AA's are trying to do; here is proff that they've been trying to defend an outdated bussines model.
With apologies to Billy Joel (Score:5, Funny)
To the tune of "Piano Man" by Billy Joel
Filk by Scott Taylor
It's nine o' clock at the iTunes store,
A phenomenal crowd's logging on,
There's an old man on AOL
Finding music from ages bygone.
He says, "Steve can you play me a memory?"
"I'm not really sure how it goes"
"But I typed in a track and got album names back!"
"And I'm not even wearing my clothes!"
Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Now Claude at Vivendi's a friend of mine
And his business is selling CDs.
And knows the solution for store distribution,
But he's worried about MP3s.
He says "Steve I believe this is killing us"
"All these pirates don't pay us a dime."
"Well I'm sure that you could be a billionaire"
"If you could sell music online."
Oh la da da diddy da da, la da diddy da da da.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Now Paul is an iPod enthusiast
Who listens to Jazz with his wife
And he's chatting with Maxine, who's still in the rap scene
And probably will be for life.
And the waitress is downloading Dixie Chicks
As the dial-up man slowly gets Stones
Yes they're sharing the bandwidth from Akamai
But it's better than P2P clones.
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Its a pretty good crowd for just Macintosh
And the PC guys give me a smile
Cause they know that iTunes will be Windows-bound soon
If they just can hold out for a while.
And the AAC sounds like originals
And rights management isn't a pain,
And they sit at the screens of their iTunes machines
And say "Man, this is worse than cocaine!"
Sell us a song, you're the iTunes man,
Sell us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody,
And you've got the pricing just right.
Who has time to backup all their random crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who has the time to do these constant backups of all the random crap on your computer. I try hard to keep copies of stuff like tax records, but I don't backup my music collection or other random junk.
Apple should allow people to download the songs again that they've already purchased. Live Phish [livephish.com] allows you to do this. Maybe there is some DRM issue that makes this difficult, but, otherwise, I don't know why they wouldn't allow this.
-prator
Lots of Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
I showed a PC user iTunes (Score:3, Interesting)
He was pretty awe struck when he saw the iTunes store, and also pretty impressed with how slick iTunes was in general. Notably, he was impressed with the amount of initial content Apple had up there, the fact that it downloads (and displays) album cover art, and the fact that previewing songs is STREAMED and not downloaded, meaning you can preview quickly.
He was equally impressed with my transparent terminal windows too
I'm not joining the "Macs are better than PCs" camp, just an interesting observation on what a PC user thought...he liked the transparent windows and the iTunes music store...which are BOTH things that are quick and easy to demonstrate at the point of sale....so maybe Apple might be able to "switch" a few more PC users with the tightly integrated music store?
YMMV.
-psy
Rocket Science (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheers to Apple for doing nearly the obvious (and that which record companies thus far have been unable to do, perhaps due to lack of vision (heads in asses and such)).
Now someone tell my why RIAA's members have been so busy chasing the negative side of internet music distribution instead of implementing something like this. In fact, it's likely that MP3.com might have arrived at something similar to this, had they not been on the wrong end of pointy lawyers.
There's no magic in this formula. The only really creative aspect is perhaps the user interface presented by Apple. There's no good reason the record companies couldn't have done this themselves, with good developers.
Of course, there's a negative side to this. Apple is (inadvertently?) furthering the status quo in the music industry. I think the music industry had been heading for a major shakeup, where artists were going to gain some control back over their works (not to mention some real compensation).
So, *cheers* and *jeers* I guess :)
Why the Apple Music Store Works (Score:3, Interesting)
First, it's more convienent than going to a brick-and-mortar music store. I don't have to get in the car and go anywhere, I don't have to dig through the racks to maybe find what I'm looking for, and I don't have to stand in line to hand one of the pierced nation my money.
Second, Apple's pricing scheme is right on the money. Been looking for a couple of tracks? Buy just the ones you want. Want the whole album? OK then.
Third, the tie-in to the iPod is great. While I don't have an iPod yet, I can imagine how much simpler it will be to download songs from the store directly to the iPod without having to rip the CD.
I think the reason so many people steal music (and if you don't pay for it, it's stealing) is that convienence factor. I've used Kazaa on my wintel laptop and iSwipe on my iBook to grab tracks from things I used to own on tape (yes, I was probably stealing. I feel bad about it, really). It's always been a big hassle to find exactly the track I want, correctly ripped, on a site with enough bandwidth to support the download etc etc etc.
Apple has made it easy and cheap to find what I want. DRM? I don't care, because I'm not going to be reposting my songs to a P2P network. I'll be burning CD's for use in the car, and I can take a CD anywhere.
I don't forsee Apple being the big dog in the online music business forever, but, as usual, they've shown the rest of the computing world that it can be done, and the method works.
Here's the deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three types of people posting on this thread.
1: The cheap bastards who at no price except for free, will music be cheap enough. These people are impossible to satisfy with a realistic business model.
2: The vast majority, who just care about price. DRM is acceptable as long as it's wussy and if the price is cheap enough, who cares. A little bit of inconvenience due to DRM is no big deal if the price is low enough (and mind you, the DRM on these AAC files is pretty wussy).
3: A loud minority for whom a purchase from the iTunes store is a political one, that feel supporting any DRM is supporting the powers that be, the music industry, the RIAA, etc. These are the types of people for whom any purchase can be a political statement. The types of people who berate you for shopping at WalMart or eating a hamburger because it supports the corrupt meat-packing industry. They have a point, but they are in the minority ... most people don't sit and go through a checklist trying to figure out which product is doing the most harm to which people before they go out to the grocery store and shop.
The money is at #2. #1 will never be satisfied and #3 will never shut up. Go get the money, Apple.
Imagine an Apple and Priceline joint venture (Score:4, Interesting)
On this same topic... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it'd be great if that did happen: if people could get their music on the service by bypassing the record companies and the RIAA. It would practically make Apple into a music company without having to buyout Universal.
And wait till the Windows version comes out. (Score:4, Insightful)
The sales so far only represent Mac owners in the United States.
How much larger is the Windows user base? We're going to have a Windows version later this year.
How much larger is the international market? Apple's going to start taking International sales soon.
On top of that, Fortune magazine reports that Apple is in talks with AOL to have iTunes be the official music player/music store of America Online. How many more sales will that be?
We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, folks.
Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Me thinks CmdrTaco gets an Ipod Free.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of toss. Linux users don't have a "moral objection" to paying for things, far from it. Apple users are known for paying for goods with ridiculously high margins because they've convinced themselves that their kit is "higher quality" than what the proles use. Or something. Nobody uses Macs at work anyway so they don't get the opportunity to warez stuf
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:Was I misled? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you only have the songs on one machine and the machine burned up... i don't know how that works out. I guess like anything else you just have to back it up. It might not sound ideal, but if somebody breaks into your car and steals your CDs (or your house burns down) i don't think Old Man Geffen will ship you replacements for free.
Re:Was I misled? (Score:4, Funny)
Many people insulate themselves against such problems by keeping backups on CD.
ASA
Re:Notice how a couple record execs applauded (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple started this (I wouldn't be surprised if Steve has had this in mind for some time, wanting to be the "savior" of the music industry), its better than everything out there (except maybe eMusic, cheap, unrestricted, and offers lots of great indie stuff at around 192 kbits), and its doing quite well with a small user base, right out of the gate. Why complain?
Hopefully apple will be able to turn out an
Re:One thing I find suprising (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Microsoft will win (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, most sales to Mac users. (Score:3, Funny)
Since the iTunes Music Store works only with iTunes... and iTunes is only available at present on the Macintosh...
Re:$.99 for low quality DRM files?????? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can burn them to CD in straight audio format (aiff), no DRM included. After that you can do what you want, straight to mp3 and Kazaa if you feel the need... nearly as many times as you want (playlist has to change every ten burns). Every had your CD chewed up by a dog? scratched while moving? ever get a refund? isn't that what backups are all about?
Yes you are missing almost everything... you got the 0.99 a song part correct, everything else was just FUD. Insightful my arse.
Re:Gotta Love the Monopoly (Score:4, Funny)
Since when has a monopoly been bad?
-BrentRe:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
However, what we (read: us consumers) need is for Apple to succeed, whether this is overpriced low-quality music or not. Based on my last trip to various CD-selling locations (just a few days ago), $12-$14 will not buy you the album from the record store
If Apple can make a success out of selling on-demand, relatively cheap music to individual consumers, and have some reasonable method to both allow those consumers to exercise thei