Apple Sells 275,000 Songs in First 18 Hours

[jayscheuerle]

Re: Re: Re: Re: iTunes being outdone...not any time soon

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
I don't agree with this assessment at all. The preliminary usage figures suggest that this could easily be a $200-300 million a year business for Apple, with little overhead. In terms of revenue, hardware will probably always be king at Apple, but in terms of profit, the music business could make all the difference.

Sadly enough, Apple will be making more money than the artists themselves... much more...

Also, I don't expect these preliminary figures to be any indicator of leveled sales. We'll see...

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by Wonder Boy
CASE IN POINT- You know the Centrino wireless networking commercials from IBM, I think? ALL my Windows user friends say "HA, Apple can't do that" And I respond that they have had wireless networking for YEARS, that is much better than anything for windows. They then ask why havent they heard about it. Sadly all i can say is that i don't know.

First, it's Intel, not IBM (but that's not all that important ... the goal of that campaign is to build the "Centrino" brand, not "Intel" ...)

Second, I personally would love to see Apple counter these ads with a "Welcome to wireless, Intel. What took ya so long?" type of ad campaign. Maybe start with a close-up of an Intel model look-alike playing on his Wintel laptop, then zoom out to a room full of people with AlBooks and iBooks. Perhaps then mention that Airport Extreme runs 5x faster than Centrino wireless, and ask Intel when they're going to step into 2003.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Scott's music

Originally posted by Dunepilot
After installing the new iTunes update which appeared in software update today, i have an entry in the libraries entry on the left hand side of the screen called "scott's music". Has anyone else got this on their version of iTunes?

If i try to access it, the top central window brings up a progress bar that says "Loading "Scott's music"" It tries to access it for about 60 seconds, then gives up.

Has there been a problem with the iTunes Music Store server mistaking my machine for one belonging to someone else?

This is someone else on your network with iTunes sharing enabled. Remember how SJ demoed Rendezvous sharing in iTunes at MacWorld? Well, this is it. The only problem is that if the person has their firewall turned on in the sharing prefs, it blocks the traffic on the port that allows you to see their files.

If they add an entry for port 3689 in their firewall will allow people to browse their tunes.

 

[BaghdadBob]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: iTunes being outdone...not any time soon

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Sadly enough, Apple will be making more money than the artists themselves... much more...

The next artist who brings tens of millions of dollars to the table is welcome to make as much as they want with it.

Just like any other business, it takes money to make money. Not that I don't think artists should make more in comparison to their labels, but that's not Apple's fault, and I'm not about to shed a bitter tear for them.

I don't know about you, but every company I've ever worked for has profited much more from my presence than they paid me for. But maybe I should have started my own print and publish or health insurance company?

 

[BaghdadBob]

Re: Re: Re: Re: iTunes being outdone...not any time soon

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
In terms of revenue, hardware will probably always be king at Apple, but in terms of profit, the music business could make all the difference.

Be wary: some analysts have suggested this could be the turning point in Apple from being a hardware company to being a media company, that "looking back, we may say this was the point they morphed."

Nooooooooo!

 

[Wonder Boy]

Originally posted by jettredmont
First, it's Intel, not IBM (but that's not all that important ... the goal of that campaign is to build the "Centrino" brand, not "Intel" ...)

Ok so it's intel. I'll fix my orignal post. but thats not the point. the point is, is that apple can do what windows machines can only better and sooner. sadly nobody but us know abou it.

 

[beatle888]

Originally posted by bertagert
I do know two people that liked the service so much while playing on my Mac that they went to Denver yesterday and each bought a new Apple laptop (ibook, al book). So maybe the itunes store has brought in more money other than song money.

just for an online music service? oh man thats weird. are you sure they werent considering an apple all along and this was an incentive?

 

[BaghdadBob]

Originally posted by beatle888
just for an online music service? oh man thats weird. are you sure they werent considering an apple all along and this was an incentive?

Yep. There are millions of people out there that would like to use macs but can't/can't afford to/haven't bothered yet. Some of them participate in these forums. This may push some of those people over the edge.

Take my fianceé for example. She just bought a 333 iMac for $250 (including shipping) on eBay. She's considered for a long time, but I think this was the last straw and she was just plain sick of watching me do all the cool things her $400 MS operating system doesn't do. I kept trying to tell her to save it for our up-coming 970 system, but she's just had it I guess.

She's really happy "My first mac!!"

Mind you, she has a 1.2 GHz AMD, but she still feels my 400 Mhz iMac runs faster than her PC. Anyway.

It's also definitely gonna sell some iPods. If I had the cash I'd buy one right now myself, I've been holding out because I had no interest in MP3s...

 

[bertagert]

Originally posted by beatle888
just for an online music service? oh man thats weird. are you sure they werent considering an apple all along and this was an incentive?

No, not only for the music service. It was the whole experience they got from letting them play with with my Mac for about 20-30 minutes.

After playing with itunes, iphoto and MS Office they saw how seamless and easy apples are to use.

However, it really wasn't until they played with itunes 4 and saw how easy it was to download and to just play the music. They're use to downloading with kazaa or limewire then opening up winamp and playing songs that may or may not be what they wanted, having incomplete songs, songs that play to loud or to soft, etc. When they saw me preview a song, download it, have it go right into itunes, transfered into my ipod and played with only a few clicks they said, "Wow, that is so smooth". Basically it was the transparency that the application has for the whole process. You never see or have to configure things to just work. Thats what appple's software does and thats what these people saw and liked. It was the whole apple package but itunes process made the biggest impression. So thats why they went out and bought 2 new laptops.

I've had a lot of people check out my computer (places like starbucks, barnes & noble, the airplane). They really do want to see what apples are all about. I'm not the type of person that tells them that windows sucks and apple is the greatest. I could care less what you or the next guy uses. The Mac works for me and people seek me out to talk about it. I show a few features, let them play around (maybe help them with things that are different from windows) and I get the same respose almost eveytime. "Thats all there is to it"? or "Man, thats so much simpliar to do compared to my computer". People like apple computers. It doesn't take much for them to switch. They're either scared to do so or some one else tells them how much Apple sucks. I have a story but will save it for another thread.

 

[wdlove]

Apple Music Store sells four songs every second - report
By Tony Smith
Posted: 01/05/2003 at 13:49 GMT

Apple's online Music Store sold around 275,000 tracks during its first 18 hours of operation, Billboard magazine's online news service has claimed.

That works out at over four tracks sold every second. Now, Apple is charging punters 99 cents per track. It would be interesting to know how much of that goes to artists (performers and composers), how much to the labels and how much is left to Apple.

We'll probably never know exactly. However, according to this CNN article, the retailer's take on a typical $16.98/£11.61 CD works out at $6.23/£4.26 - 36.7 per cent of the retail price. That means (very roughly) Apple's getting around 36 cents a track. Of course, there are costs associated with CD shipments that aren't an issue with online sales - such as distribution and packaging costs, to name but two. Apple may be benefiting from the absence of these costs, or the labels may be. More likely it will differ from label to label, but our unscientific, just-for-fun figure gives you a rough idea.

Indeed, since we originally posted this story, many readers have pointed out a recent Forbes article stating Apple takes on average 35 cents for each track it sells - so our guestimate's not so far off.

On that basis, Apple added $99,000 to its Q3 revenue tally during the first 18 hours the Music Store was open to the public. If it can keep that up throughout the quarter, it will make a significant, multi-million dollar contribution to the company's bottom line (though its own costs of sale have yet to be deducted). It's not a patch on hardware revenues, but every little bit helps in these tough times.

Billboard bases the claim for the number of Music Store tracks sold on comment from sources within major music labels. It also alleges that at least two labels have signed up for Apple's upcoming Windows version of Music Store. We'd have thought Apple would have built such a licence into its agreement with the labels from the word go, but maybe that's not the case. ®

 

[IJ Reilly]

Originally posted by wdlove
It's not a patch on hardware revenues, but every little bit helps in these tough times.

Oh but it could be, if you consider that Apple can't be reaching even 1% of their potential market for this service at this point. So increase those revenues by literally two orders of magnitude, and see if those numbers are not impressive indeed. In fact if I weren't already way too heavy in AAPL, I'd scrape together some cash and buy now, before the analysts fire up their calculators and figure out what the music store might contribute to Apple's bottom line.