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iTMS Tops One Quarter Billion Songs Sold

Veldek said:
Macmaniac said:
This is great, I hope they can reach half a billion this year.
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At the recent rate of about 8,750,000 songs per week they reach about 670,000,000 songs at the end of the year. And this is without the new Pepsi promotion.
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My records show they've been selling about 1.28 million songs a day recently (similar to your 8.75 M/wk); if they do no better than sustaining this rate they will reach the 500 million mark by 7 August. There's every reason to believe the rate will continue increasing, though, so I expect we'll see the announcement sooner.
 
Veldek said:
Last time I checked 0.03 * 250,000,000 = 7,500,000. So, it’s a lot more than one million.
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I've heard it depends on how many songs you buy at one time that determines if Apple makes any money. If you only buy one song a day then Apple loses money due to the cost of processing the credit card transaction. If you buy two songs a day ( or at a time) then Apple breaks even. Buying 3 or more songs at a time means that Apple makes a profit. At least that is what I remember reading someplace.
 
Man, not to be a negative Nelly, but I am SO sick of hearing about the iPod and the digital music revolution. Even Wired Magazine listed the iPod as "Tired" in it's funny Wired | Tired | Expired graphic in this months magazine (Firefox on the cover.)

I think Apple is teetering on the edge of overexposure. If they fall over the edge, they could find themselves in the sticky situation of having the iPod no longer be cool to own because it's so mainstream. Consumer backlash could ensue.

Just a thought. Good for them on selling so many songs though.
 
Apple is doing great!

But maybe we should observe a momment of silence, as a sign of compassionate understanding, for all those 229 other music stores. These poor stores are probably not even selling 1/10 as much as song as Apple and they can't even profit from sales of portable music players. My thoughts are with you little guys. Keep on fighting! (...So Apple won't have a complete monopoly in the music arena) Need a hug?
 
macnews said:
Yes, iTunes IS profitable. This comes directly from some inside contacts I have at Apple - yes, really inside Apple. Apple planned on the iTMS NOT being profitable for the first few years, or possibly ever. They saw it as a key part of selling iPods and the halo effect.

What has happened, however, if the economies of scale. They make a little more than "a few" pennies per song but selling a million songs a day makes all those pennies add up. If there is anyone who knows how this works it would be Dell. Funny why Dell would dismiss the iPod as a fad. Guess they just don't get the iPod/iTMS connection.
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Hey, could you call those "inside Apple" folks and ask then when the new powerbooks are coming out? :D :D

I have about 30 itunes purchases in my 3000 song library-- its a great way to pick up singles. I have to say, however, that I'm a little uncomfortable about then, given the DRM, and that I prefer to buy CDs (generally used) and rip them.
 
another updated projection...

iTMS went from 230 million at keynote to 250 million today. from 12/16 announcement of 200 million, the songs sold per day went from 1.11 million to 1.67 million.

the projection for the two year anniversary is now 320 million songs, for early July WWDC is 397 million songs and the end of the year is 605 million songs. given the momentum, i'd be not surprised at all to see iTMS sell 500 million songs by WWDC.

edit: it may sound crazy, but by the super bowl, there's a chance iTMS will hit 300 million, which would be a nice round number to kick off the pepsi promotion/super bowl ad.
 
AppleFoussa said:
Let's lok at the convenience of buying songs online. You crave a certain artist or a certain song all you got to do is sit on your chair and go to iTunes. Definitaly beats gowing to tower records or some crap like that. I can't remember lasat time I went there.
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The convenience is definitely nice, but if I like more than 3-5 songs on an album - I really enjoy owning the CD. The tangibility of the CD, Booklet and artwork are still very nice, especially for my favorite artists. I don't think I would ever buy an entire album from them though - unless it was exclusive to iTunes.

The store has proven fantastic for putting together mixes for parties, where I want a gaggle of songs that I couldn't possibly afford to purchase otherwise.
 
pigbat said:
The profit is pennies per song but those pennies add up.
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So true.

Let's say apple makes a 5 cent profit per song download. (For discussion sake -- no idea how much they make)

And they have sold 250 million songs. That would be a 12.5 million profit. Not bad at all.

...and now with the iPod Shuffle, which can play the protected songs, I bet we will see the numbers jump higher.

Edit: I meant to add, that the iPod Shuffle is going after 30% of the market (low end flash based players). Not sure how many iPods are in existance as of today. But SJ held up the 10 millioned one at MWSF. Rumored manufacturing rates for the iPod Shuffle are 400K to 500K per month, or 4.8 million to 6 million per year. This is a huge jump in just one portion of the MP3 market. And I am sure that Apple is working to increase the iPod and iPod mini market segments as well. Plus the new iTMS stores opening. So we should see a huge jump in song sales this year.

Sushi
 
rosalindavenue said:
I'm a little uncomfortable about then, given the DRM, and that I prefer to buy CDs (generally used) and rip them.
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I'm a bit confused about peoples concern over the DRM - if you burn the songs to CD and then rip them again into iTunes they are treated as regular songs with no DRM, aren't they? I haven't tried it in a while, but I know that was the case early on, maybe Apple has changed that somehow.
 

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lem0nayde said:
I'm a bit confused about peoples concern over the DRM - if you burn the songs to CD and then rip them again into iTunes they are treated as regular songs with no DRM, aren't they? I haven't tried it in a while, but I know that was the case early on, maybe Apple has changed that somehow.
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it degrades quality. as far as i remember, it's one of the reasons jobs managed to convince the music labels that the easiest way to remove DRM would degrade quality somewhat so that there'll be less incentive to flood the p2p with those files.
 
jxyama said:
it degrades quality. as far as i remember, it's one of the reasons jobs managed to convince the music labels that the easiest way to remove DRM would degrade quality somewhat so that there'll be less incentive to flood the p2p with those files.
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Really? That's odd, since it would have to be converted to an uncompressed AIFF to work properly on a CD. It should retain the same quality as the original DRM file, unless iTunes can recognize (maybe through metadata) when a DRM song is being reimported and lower the quality (which, come to think of it, is totally possible)
 
lem0nayde said:
Really? That's odd, since it would have to be converted to an uncompressed AIFF to work properly on a CD. It should retain the same quality as the original DRM file, unless iTunes can recognize (maybe through metadata) when a DRM song is being reimported and lower the quality (which, come to think of it, is totally possible)
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I think the loss of quality comes from converting it to AIFF file and then back to an AAC file.

Just a thought.

/asif
 
roadapple said:
I can't help but think it's the ipod that is supporting the development of the iTunes store music store, and that iTunes will soon (2-3 years) become a huge brand for online content purchases of all types. The ipod is not going away, but it will be greatly overshadowed with new changes to the online store. The real money is in selling the content, not the players.
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Right now the money is in selling the players, but I agree with you that Apple is fantastically positioned to be a major content provider of all kinds of stuff. This new NFL thing is only scratching the surface of it. I expect very soon to see some sort of alliance with a news source like NPR, New York Times, NBC News, etc., to put some sort of free "Daily News" track out there to listen to with more content available for purchase. Another possibility is some sort of subscription model, which would make a lot more sense when iPod mobile comes along.
 
lem0nayde said:
Really? That's odd, since it would have to be converted to an uncompressed AIFF to work properly on a CD. It should retain the same quality as the original DRM file, unless iTunes can recognize (maybe through metadata) when a DRM song is being reimported and lower the quality (which, come to think of it, is totally possible)
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just because the format of the file is uncompressed AIFF doesn't mean it's CD-quality. AAC already discarded some information in the process of initial encoding. "decompressing" it up to AIFF format does not bring back the information that's already been discarded. at best, AIFF upcoded from AAC will sound as good as the original AAC. then you compress it again to DRM-free mp3 and you've got even more information loss. iTunes isn't doing anything tricky, like you suggested.
 
lem0nayde said:
Really? That's odd, since it would have to be converted to an uncompressed AIFF to work properly on a CD. It should retain the same quality as the original DRM file, unless iTunes can recognize (maybe through metadata) when a DRM song is being reimported and lower the quality (which, come to think of it, is totally possible)
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My understanding is that a track is converted to uncompressed AIFF when it is burned to CD-- however, the original song lost a lot of "bits" in being compressed to AAC-- and those original bits are not reinstated when the AAC is blown back up to AIFF. So the AIFF is like a swiss cheese copy. I think the re-burned track does retain the original quality of the DRM'd AAC, but that quality is not the quality of the real full uncompressed track.
 
jxyama said:
it degrades quality. as far as i remember, it's one of the reasons jobs managed to convince the music labels that the easiest way to remove DRM would degrade quality somewhat so that there'll be less incentive to flood the p2p with those files.
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This might also be a reason why Apple doesn't sell higher bitrates or lossless songs.
 
Wow, that's quite something. And it's still increasing exponentially. They'll hit a billion by the year's end. This will continue to happen as long as iPod remains on top. iTMS needs iPod, and iPod needs iTMS.
 
jxyama said:
just because the format of the file is uncompressed AIFF doesn't mean it's CD-quality. AAC already discarded some information in the process of initial encoding. "decompressing" it up to AIFF format does not bring back the information that's already been discarded. at best, AIFF upcoded from AAC will sound as good as the original AAC. then you compress it again to DRM-free mp3 and you've got even more information loss. iTunes isn't doing anything tricky, like you suggested.
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Right, I know that converting to AIFF doesn't magically bring back any information. I tend to rip using the highest AAC encoding - so I guess I didn't consider people who might want to rip it to an MP3, which would be a fairly severe double compression and definitely degrade sound.
 
Game over.

srobert said:
Apple is doing great!

But maybe we should observe a momment of silence, as a sign of compassionate understanding, for all those 229 other music stores. These poor stores are probably not even selling 1/10 as much as song as Apple and they can't even profit from sales of portable music players. My thoughts are with you little guys. Keep on fighting! (...So Apple won't have a complete monopoly in the music arena) Need a hug?
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This is the main reason, I think, that Apple continues to publically state how many tracks it has sold through iTMS. Apple wants consumers and competitors to know that it already has market power, that it is the default provider of online audio content and that no one else need consider getting into a pissing match with them over total tracks sold.

Can you imagine how much ridicule Napster would endure for an announcement that it had sold 10 million tracks?
 
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