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Music Businesses Media Apple

Windows iTunes Sells A Million Songs In 3.5 Days 1007

Posted by simoniker from the ker-ching dept.
ajkst1 writes "According to an Apple press release, the iTunes Music Store has sold 1 million songs since its release on the Windows platform on October 16. Also of note is the 1 million downloads of the iTunes music program itself. When the iTMS was first released, it took a full week to sell a million songs. The store has now had 14 million songs purchased and downloaded since its original launch in April."
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Windows iTunes Sells A Million Songs In 3.5 Days More

Windows iTunes Sells A Million Songs In 3.5 Days

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  • go apple! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <{aaaaa} {at} {SPAM.yahoo.com}> on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:29PM (#7263158) Journal
    looking at the napster site i can see why it is so important that itunes be the standard. (check out the partners bit)

  • If I don't have a mc, windows, or an ipod, am I left out in the cold?
    • Why yes, you are.

      They also try to force those of us with Windows or a Mac to have an IPOD. Fortunately, you can burn the songs off to CD an unlimited number of times, so you could always rip them back to your standard mp3 player. Too bad they didn't make it easier.

      Oops, did I just violate the DMCA?

    • If I don't have a mc, windows, or an ipod, am I left out in the cold?

      I know. I tried to install iTunes on my IBM PC XT, but couldn't jam the CD into the 5 1/4" drive. Insensitive clods!

  • Note... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:31PM (#7263184) Homepage
    Expect iPod sales to soar into the holidays. Apple made something very difficult seem very simple to the end user, and now they're being rewarded.

    • Re:Note... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by moonboy ( 2512 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:50PM (#7263464)
      It actually seems as though the record companies saw it as being 'very difficult', but the consumers saw it as being 'very easy'. Fortunately, so did Apple.

  • sales figures (Score:2, Interesting)

    by agent2 ( 628468 )
    From my understanding, because at macrumors.com, some people were a little confused, is that the Windows version of iTunes had 1 million downloads and as a result iTMS, had sold 1 million songs in 3.5 days. They wern't specifying specifically that Windows users downloaded 1 million songs.

  • Wrong! (Score:4, Informative)

    by wo1verin3 ( 473094 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:32PM (#7263190) Homepage
    >> Windows iTunes Sells A Million Songs In 3.5 Days

    Incorrect.

    Fact: There were 1 million downloads of iTunes for Windows.

    Fact: Between Windows and Mac there were one million songs in 3.5 days.


    • 1 million downloads?

      99% of which are already playing on the radio. bleh.

    • Re:Wrong! (Score:5, Informative)

      by caomania ( 579403 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:00PM (#7263586)
      Before itunes was released for windows mac ITMS users where purchasing 600,000 songs a week(7 days). On average that's 85,714 (600,000/7) per day. So we could expect mac ITMS users to purchase around 300,000 songs within a normal 3.5 day period. Now unless you're suggesting that mac users got so excited about the windows itunes release that they increased their music consumption by 3x +, you're overlooking a 700,000 song gap. I 'll even be conservative and say that probably half a million of the song downloads where definitely pc users.

  • What they want you to think (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jbellis ( 142590 ) * <jonathan@carDEBI ... com minus distro> on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:32PM (#7263198) Homepage
    is "wow, 1M downloads by win32 users already."

    but if you read it carefully it just says the 1M are "by iTunes users," i.e. including existing Mac users.

    ... where does submitter get his 600k/wk figure, btw? It's not in the linked press release.

  • thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tsch ( 593024 )
    one of the problems I have with the service is that album pricing can be a bit uneven. There are too many albums (ex: NWA's greatest hits) that have an "extra" song or two added to them that then are not available for the $9.99 download because, well, you'd be getting MORE than just the album. (In the NWA case that's BS, but whatever.) Also, new albums (such as Snoop's Paid the Cost to be the Boss) don't always sell for $9.99. When I went to buy Cost a couple of months ago, it was $17 or $18. That being

  • Count me as a customer (Score:4, Informative)

    by Port1080 ( 515567 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:33PM (#7263216) Homepage
    I downloaded iTunes on Wednesday and used it to buy an album that night. Even though I'm on 56k dial-up, it downloaded flawlessly (although it did take about 4 hours, as I expected). I have to say that I'm pretty impressed - for a free jukebox program, it's really high quality. It still has some issues and bugs that could be polished out of it, but overall it's a well designed and easy to use program that I have no major complaints about. It's heads and tails above Windows Media Player 9, and a better jukebox than Winamp (although I think Winamp is still a better standalone player). If Jobs can play his cards right, this could be big.

  • I guarantee you there will be more of these (Score:5, Informative)

    by coolmacdude ( 640605 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:34PM (#7263226) Homepage Journal
    I hope every one isn't posted to the front page like when iTMS first came out.

    Seriously, I think iTMS for WIndows is going to be much bigger than most people have given it credit for. M$ can dismiss is all they want, but unless they have something better to offer I'm not seeing much viable competition. It amazes me that after Apple overwhelmingly demonstrated to the marketplace that customers don't want subscription fees or cutthroat DRM, there are still companies out there trying to make those business models work. Oh well, meanwhile iTunes will rise to the top fast.
  • I wonder how worried MS is by this, as it certainly is proving popular. It is potentially a strong foothold in the market for Apple, and knowing how Microsoft likes to get it's fingers in as many pies as it can, you've got to know they're going to decide they want a slice of this one soon.

    So, do you think Apple can hold out if Microsoft decided to bundle "Miscrosoft Music Store" in the next version of Windows Media Player? Would people bother to download iTunes to use iTMS, or would they just use what wa
  • The interface kind of sucks. Why they chose to redefine 'Maximize' is beyond me, and you can't get it to fill the window.

    I don't think saving $2 on an album is that great of a bargain when the compression is lossy and you factor in the cost of disc and jewel case.

    Quicktime and iTunesHelper are both loaded at computer startup and happily sit in the background, guzzling memory (iTunesHelper is 3 MB, for example). Does this crap really need to run when I'm not using it?

    Arbitrary restrictions on burning

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:51PM (#7263481)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Admittedly I have no clue why apple couldnt just have these disabled by default and only enabled as needed.

        Your average joe probably never checks the options and just expects things to work. Activating an option while obvious to some, there is still a good number of people for whom it is not obvious and would probably get more people phoning Apple for help than needed.
      • Apple's recent history has been to get things "right" first, and get performance improvements made later. Case in point: OS X, which began as a very slow OS, and with each successive cat (Jaguar, Panther) has become faster and more efficient.

        So it's likely that Apple will release faster/smaller versions for Windows with time.
    • Why they chose to redefine 'Maximize' is beyond me, and you can't get it to fill the window.

      They didn't. Take a close look at the middle "window move" button. It never changes from the two-window "resize" icon, which is what Firebird is when it's maximized (right now.)

      When I click that button, and go to a "not-full-screen" window, that button is a one-window "maximize" icon.

      Apple didn't re-define anything; they just didn't make their app maximizable... and it's hardly the first app to do so. (Winamp,

  • Did you catch the patent? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:35PM (#7263242)
    Apple's innovative and patent-pending online "Allowance" feature which allows parents to automatically deposit funds into their kids' iTunes Music Store account every month;

    Yet another worthless, obvious patent. Sigh.
  • I see a song on an album, buy it, think it's cool and have to buy the albom for another $10....there's no way to reconcile that you've already paid $1 for the song.

    Oh, and streaming rendezvous(sp?) from onr machine to another borked the firewall/router/basestation/toaster so hard I had to go power cycle it...but I can't blaim iTunes without a little more testing.

  • Praise be to Apple and Steve Jobs for figuring out that there is a better way to distribute music in this day and age.

    Once I get my finances situated, I'm off to download iTunes and get started. It's about time that someone realized that yes, there is in fact a good online music business model.

    Now, how to go about getting them to sell my band's music on the store? Since we don't have a label, the split of sales would be a bit different, I'd assume there would have to be a different deal structure worked out. Does anyone else here on /. have an indie band, and have you tried to deal with iTunes? Any experiences/comments would be most welcome...
    • Have you looked into CDBaby [cdbaby.net] for electronic distribution?

    • Now, how to go about getting them to sell my band's music on the store? Since we don't have a label, the split of sales would be a bit different, I'd assume there would have to be a different deal structure worked out. Does anyone else here on /. have an indie band, and have you tried to deal with iTunes? Any experiences/comments would be most welcome...

      As far as I know Apple is only dealing with record copanies, since it's a pain to deal with individual bands. Apple could indirectly get into some *more

  • Well for only a few days that ain't half-bad, I really love the system they've got going in the iTunes Music store, I dun think Napster is really gonna use it's "huge market potential because of brand recognition" as much as ppl think, more like "wth, you have to PAY??", unless napster pulls some very nice stuff with their client, iTunes should stay ahead of the game(hopefully).
    only wish they would break the country boundary (yes I know that's not easy)

  • Busy. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by villain170 ( 664238 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:36PM (#7263265) Homepage
    Is something wrong with mine? It keeps telling me it can't connect to the store because it is busy.

  • Crazy like a Fox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:36PM (#7263267) Homepage
    The more I think about it, the more clever it seems.

    So you can get iTunes for free. Ho-friggin-ray. And you can rip MP3's to your hearts content, so they work with *all* MP3 players.

    Wait - Windows Media Player rips to WMA by default. Oh, it does MP3's, but you have to pay more to get it to work better than crap.

    Ok, so what. Yeah, it's a good app.

    And it lets you burn CD's - music and data, right from the playlist.

    For free.

    And all the other machines in the house - they can stream off that, so I just put all my MP3's on one box, put iTunes on the other computers, and stream from there.

    Ok, that is kind of cool. Check out the online store. You know, I've only wanted to buy 1 song off this album. Cool - I just did. Only cost $1 - that's not too bad.

    And I can burn it to a music CD, or put it on 2 more machines.

    Then comes the fall. You know, I wanted to get an MP3 player anyway. For some insane reason (you had an additional $300), you get an iPod.

    Don't need a Mac, and it works just fine with your Windows and iTunes.

    But hold on - turns out you can use this iPod thing with digital camera and upload the pictures to the iPod, and from there to the computer. Oh, but you need a Mac for that.

    You know, what do I use my computer for? Email, a few games - huh, that Aspyr company is porting over the ones I really like anyway -

    Man, and this other stuff comes free with a Mac - a movie editor, a browser that blocks popup ads by default, there's less virus problems -

    Hm....

    Now, I don't think everybody will consider gong to the Mac just because of the iTunes store.

    But having "hip 20-to-30-somethings" tell us how switching to the Mac is "the bomb" really didn't work.

    So Steve Jobs is changing tactics: Go ahead, take a bite of this apple. It's free! It will just give you knowledge! Or, barring that, a pretty kick ass music player!

    Next thing people know, they realize that they've been living naked under Windows for a long time, and start to make themselves aprons from leaves.

    In this case, by plucking them from the Apple tree.

    I'm curious to see what will happen from here. Remember: Apple doesn't need to dominate the market. It already makes a profit with its products now, and it happy to do so.

    This will just give it the chance to make more profit - and maybe show people what they've been missing along the way.

    Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.

  • The success of this sales model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by indros13 ( 531405 ) * on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:36PM (#7263268) Homepage Journal
    should prove the point that music piracy and falling CD sales were indicative of consumer demand for a more flexible model. I'd bet that revenues for iTunes and other online services will continue to rise and CD sales will continue to fall.

  • It would be a PR bonus if Apple is using it's own XServe dogfood to handle the iTunes traffic (and Apple made some noise about it).
    • At one point I heard Mr. Jobs discussing the backend, and yes... the Xserve, Xserve RAID and the venerable MacOS X Server are all the behind-the-scenes puppetmasters for iTunes Music Store.

      Of course, Apple also uses Quicktime (once again, their own product), likely coupled with some in-house custom app to do the encoding and maintenace of the store, so you could say that when using iTunes, you're using Apple software from end to end, save for your OS if you happen to be stuck on a Windows box.

      Of course fo

  • Perfect for One Hit Wonders (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nutcase ( 86887 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:38PM (#7263298) Homepage Journal
    I dont think I will use the iTMS for full albums. I am still to attached to tangible cd's and such. They are just nice. But it has proven PERFECT for one hit wonders and such....

    I used to rip all my cd's and then go on gnutella to grab the few tracks that I don't own but listen to all the time, or single songs from artists who I generally dislike (i.e. Lose Yourself by Eminem) - now I just buy those songs for 99cents from iTMS, avoiding the "must buy a full cd" syndrome that always stopped me before, and suddenly I own every song on my computer for just a few bucks.

    In fact, the iTMS taught me something that I hopey the RIAA will learn one of these days: Good Karma is fun.

  • Golly gee, RIAA! (Score:5, Flamebait)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:38PM (#7263302) Homepage
    It looks like people do want to pay for their music... if only you'd damn well make it reasonably attractive for them to do so.

  • Is the prices on the older tunes. There's no way in hell anyone will pay buck-per-song for the older shit if you can buy a real CD for 3 bucks.

  • Apple's Digital Hub Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:41PM (#7263338) Journal
    Each month, Apple comes out with some sort of announcement that still blows me away. MacWorld after MacWorld they have new products to support this digital hub lifestyle. When will it end???

    How many of you scoffed when Jobs mentioned the "digital hub"? I did. "WTF is a digital hub? The Mac already does all of these things he's talking about. Simple ways to work with your digital camera, for adding new hardware, etc" Yet they come out with the iPod, a non-computer/non-software item. And it sells like nuts. Then they sell it to Windows users. And now with iTunes Music Service, it's become quite evident Apple is interested in more than being simply a computer manufacturer. People scoffed at the idea, but one million songs in a few days is nothing to laugh at. Can't wait to see what happens to iPod sales (and conversely iTMS sales) in the holiday season.

  • WOW!!! A Million Songs! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BlackBolt ( 595616 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:42PM (#7263353) Homepage Journal
    The good publicity Apple's sure to get from this would almost make it worth their while to buy those songs themselves...

    ...hmm... wait a minute...

    No, sorry, my bad. It wasn't Apple. It was me. I admit it. I was the one who bought those songs. I just wanted to see if their servers could withstand a vicious one-man slashdotting...

    It can - apparently the iTunes server's not running Windows. But I'll try again tonight, this time with my friend Chris buying the same songs simultaneously. Then I'll get Greg and Dave to help me buy whole albums at a time, and pretty soon, Steve Jobs will crumble in terror and BEG us to stop our vicious assault on their site!

    Steve Jobs, I warned you - I've got my VISA, and I'm ready to
    take.
    you.
    down.

    You didn't care when I started buying iPod after iPod in an attempt to exhaust your assembly line workers in a one-man iPod Slashdotting. Well this is different. This time, I'm serious and I've upped my VISA limits. Your site is toast. Get ready to rumble!

    Signed, your pal
    Hackmaster Fred

  • I don't mean to troll, but (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moltar77 ( 708055 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:02PM (#7263613)
    do we like or hate the RIAA today? Keep in mind, buying iTunes songs is supporting the people that subpeona grandmas and 12 year-old girls. iTunes sounds attractive, but I hate to give anything to people this greedy and corrupt.

  • Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:11PM (#7263720) Journal
    If you like the company or not it is hard to deny that Apple has done almost everything right. In the last couple of years they have:
    1. Adopted open standards
    2. Used and contributed to open-source programs
    3. Brought music to the net (legally and successfully)
    4. Brought their hardware up to x86 speeds
    5. Brought UNIX to the desktop

  • Innovate, don't regulate (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:14PM (#7263752)
    Isn't it amazing what happens when you innovate instead of regulate?

    I'm sure all the people who purchased songs did so because they were in fear that the RIAA was going to sue them, not because Apple has heavily promoted a new way to conviently acquire just the music they want.

    Score: Technology 1, Lawyers 0

  • What a dumbass (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:16PM (#7263792) Homepage Journal
    "The store has now had 14 million songs purchased and downloaded since its original launch in April."

    Anybody remember when Jack Valenti said this:

    Well, my answer to that is: There is no business model ever struck off by the hand and grain of man that can compete with free. It can't be done.


    Permission to be smug, sir!

  • And man my wife is gonna be pissed when she sees the Amex Platinum bill. What could I do? I'm trying to keep my Apple stock share up...! It *seemed* reasonable to do at the time....

    Glad I had lot of CDRs lying around....

  • Proactive dissing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday October 20, 2003 @05:40PM (#7264105) Homepage Journal
    I'm sure it's just annoying the hell out of some folks that Apple is showing so much early success with iTunes for Windows and the new iTMS. So in the spirit of service, I've rounded up some assaults on Apple that should mollify the critics.

    1) Apple blew it. They came out with iTunes for Windows too late. Ha ha hah! Buymusic.com is already there first. The vaporous Dell and Microsoft services are much better on paper than than this pathetic Apple offering.

    2) AAC? Beh. Give me the open standard. Give me WMP! Support standards, Apple!

    3) Black turtlenecks? Who wears black turtlenecks?

    4) 99 cents a song? What, do you think I'm RICH?! Give me songs for free. Artists don't get much money when they go through the iTMS anyway, so why should I give the artists anything at all? Answer me that, man.

    5) They're just trying to sell iPods. So that means that even if I get the iTunes app for free and use it, Apple is screwing me over. Yeah, they're screwing me over. That's it.

  • Nomad works with iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shuh ( 13578 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @06:23PM (#7264533) Journal


    I don't know where people are getting the idea that you need an iPod if you have iTunes. I've been using a Nomad IIc flash-player, and iTunes recognizes it and works with it through the USB interface just fine. Is this some FUD or what?



  • Rephrasing the headline (Score:3, Funny)

    by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @12:49AM (#7267546)
    "Apple offers 1 million clues to RIAA; none taken so far."

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