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iTunes Continues Its Climb: 3rd Largest Music Retailer
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I wonder where bittorrent falls in there
I think it's safe to say that they have 0% of retail sales.
that's what apple want you and the record companies to believe. when apple was selling 100 million tracks a year they were breaking even or turning a slight profit, but now that they're selling tracks by the billion... they're probably turning 300-400 million dollars in revenue from songs alone.
sure they have to pay for advertising, and there's a music store staff that pick albums to highlight, and they've got server and bandwidth costs to account for, but make no mistake they're making a ton of money from itunes sales.
this has been apple's trojan horse all along. the ipod is fantastic, but it's the music store that's going to provide massive amounts of profitability in the future. it's why yahoo, napster, microsoft, walmart, mtv, best buy, et. al. got in the game without a DAP of their own; they all know that entertainment is going to be purchased online and it's going to be huge! just to give you an idea blockbuster alone has revenues of $5.35 billion dollars. dvd sales are in the tens of billions of dollars. apple is aiming squarely for those markets and i'd be willing to bet that a few years down the road, apple will clear $10 billion a year in iTS sales (all inclusive, music, games, movies (rental/purchase), television, ring tones, etc...)
I am surprised to see wal-mart up there just for the simple fact as mentioned, they sell the clean version of everything. Hence why I will never buy a record from there again. I buy all my stuff from Best Buy...why? Well while iTunes is attractive, as we all know for a while they were strictly one format. I have a mp3 format preference at 192. I like the quality and file size with that combination and well, you could not get that from iTunes. Plus I like having a hard copy. Now that they are going with higher quality stuff it is looking more attractive, which I think is why they are bumping up on the charts. I personally will still buy from Best Buy just because I like having the original in hard format, cause you just never know.
But all in all, good job to Apple for their success in music selling. Competition is always good in my opinion. Can drive down prices in other places =).
But all in all, good job to Apple for their success in music selling. Competition is always good in my opinion. Can drive down prices in other places =).
Go iTunes
I remember back in college when we used to play previews of songs, since nobody had an MP3 then (Minidisc city ). Theres so much they can do to make it better and it's still at number 3. Kinda cool.
Wonder where it places in the UK or Europe market?
I remember back in college when we used to play previews of songs, since nobody had an MP3 then (Minidisc city
). Theres so much they can do to make it better and it's still at number 3. Kinda cool.Wonder where it places in the UK or Europe market?
I don't know. As recently as this New York Magazine story -- http://nymag.com/news/features/33524/ -- you see sentences like "The iTunes store has now sold over 2.5 billion songsand directly contributed next to nothing to Apples bottom line."
And Apple has never tried to hide that they're making money on anything. A profit-making company = a good investment in the stock market = happiness in Cupertino.
that's bad journalism on their part though. apple doesn't break out figures for the iTS despite repeatedly being asked the question. the reporter is simply parroting the company line.
and while they're never afraid to boast about making money they're purposely vague -- take the ipod they sold 22 million last quarter, but they never break that down by model. 22 million 80gb video ipods is a load of profit, 20 million shuffles and 2 million nano/video ipods not so much.
Well, with the ol' mammoths Sam Goody, Musicland, Coconuts and other traditional corporate music stores all but completely gone, what's left? Walmart and Best Buy are still relatively the "new guys" in the music selling market and not even specialized in music. Amazon, Borders, CDnow and thousands of other online stores chip away at fractions of the music market share. Not to mention all the independent record stores that seem to be having a revival. What about the fact that pretty much everyone is selling CD's now? You'll find them sold at various grocery stores, Walgreens, health stores, gas stations, department stores, big box retailers, discount retailers, book stores, etc, etc.. Not to mention the e-music market that Apple is succeeding in as well as all the "lesser" others like Napster, etc.. Essentially, there are too many places and options available for one company to dominate in total market share as each business (no matter how small) still takes a fraction of market share away from the complete total. It all adds up when you consider the thousands of places you can buy CD's
Oh, and congrats, Apple!
Reminds me of the "WALL MART" ep. of South Park!
With Apple still on the rise I wonder how long it will be until we hear of another story of Wal Mart threatening the record labels or movie houses to stay away from Apple or else!
I don't know how much it really has to do with the CRTC. I suspect that the Canadian broadcasters, who purchase the rights from the American producers, effectively own the broadcast rights in the Canadian market, which precludes itunes Canada from also selling the content.
That's the way it started out but even Apple can see the writing on the wall. DRM free music (at a higher price, of course) is the way of the future. Apple's in the #3 spot when it comes to music sales so I'm sure they're thinking of the future and their place in the music industry. There's no need to sell music to sell iPods, iPods sell themselves, now Apple is out to create the ultimate in online music and video stores.
We've only just seen the beginning of Apple's transformation into a consumer electronics behemoth.
CDNOW is largely out of business. They now link to Amazon, but I think they have something to do with Columbia House.
This is quite true; Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy are limited *very much* by the physical space taken up by their music catalogs. If you want a song by any artist from more than a few years back, there's no way it will be on one of the CDs at Best Buy or Wal-Mart. The shelf space is quite limited, compared to Apple's ability to add tons more CDs by just installing a new rack full of RAID arrays.
And with DRM gone, I will feel much better about my purchases (it didn't really hold me back in the past, but it's nice to be able to do whatever I want with my songs now).
iTunes Store
Funny how happy a lot of people here are happy that Apple are now number 3 - but how many people have bought music from iTunes? Maybe it's just the minority, but all I have read here is people complaining about iTunes and that they never or will never buy from iTunes.
As I am on the hunt (and nearly finished) tracking down every UK number one since the charts began, iTunes has been a godsend.
Thank you, Apple.
Funny how happy a lot of people here are happy that Apple are now number 3 - but how many people have bought music from iTunes? Maybe it's just the minority, but all I have read here is people complaining about iTunes and that they never or will never buy from iTunes.
As I am on the hunt (and nearly finished) tracking down every UK number one since the charts began, iTunes has been a godsend.
Thank you, Apple.
It is going to keep going up
I don't expect anything but to see Apple's music sales continue to climb until more competitive digital stores appear.
Selling CDs in retail stores is a antiquated selling method for todays media.
I don't expect anything but to see Apple's music sales continue to climb until more competitive digital stores appear.
Selling CDs in retail stores is a antiquated selling method for todays media.
- How many artists have full albums worth buying?
- What does a CD give you that downloads don't - CD sleeve, that's it
- Selection in stores is limited (often only new titles)
- Most albums you can't hear clips before hand
- They're expensive
- Searching for a particular song is impossible if you don't know exact details
- You have to go to store
I always have to chuckle when I hear the "I won't buy anything from iTunes until they support Ogg Vorbis, Lossless, 3 megabit encoding", you name the reason, crowd of whiners. iTMS sucks, the iPod sucks. These losers really put a smile on my face, god love 'em.
So I'm a loser? I'm sorry, but I never buy anything off of iTunes because of the quality. I need high quality tracks to play at clubs, etc., and I buy wav files whenever possible ($2-4/track). I can even tell the difference between 320kbps and wav files on a large system (cleaner bass on the wav, these are huge kW systems, btw). 128-192kbps tracks are out of the question.
A CD gives you DRM free (without paying more, and having your info embedded). CD gives you backup if you computer breaks, without the effort of backing up.
Selection in my local HMV (a road and a half away) is huge compared to the iTS.
Oldies CDs are often cheap-as-chips (£2.99 for an album-ish), and after the original boom, albums drop to a price below that of the iTS
Apple pays about 70 cent per song directly to the record companies. That means they kept about $750 million of the revenue from 2.5 billion songs. Take $1 million for hardware (that will buy Apple a hundred Xserves and a few hundred terabyte of harddisk space). Does anyone think Apple spent $749 millions to serve these songs?
Hobby
Sometime in the future....
Reporter: The Apple iTunes Music Store is now the largest Music Retailer. What do you have to say about it?
Steve Jobs: We think of the iTunes Music Store as just a hobby.
Sometime in the future....
Reporter: The Apple iTunes Music Store is now the largest Music Retailer. What do you have to say about it?
Steve Jobs: We think of the iTunes Music Store as just a hobby.