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iTunes Countdown to 100 Million

"...and hence taking advantage of a legal clause that allows you to enter without paying is not truely in the nature of the competition, and may make it unfair to those who have actually paid for their entry."

Nonsense.

In the U.S., a lottery requires a payment for entry. Lotteries are heavily regulated an are monopolized by the states.

A sweepstakes is free to enter. Period.

This promotion is a sweepstakes. Apple is required by law to offer free means of entry.

Period.
 
rogo said:
This promotion is a sweepstakes. Apple is required by law to offer free means of entry.
Period.
Click to expand...

That's a strange law. Is that because of discrimination against the poor?
:p I guess I wouldn't be surprised.
 
Shenanigans!

I don't know how anyone would track whether this contest is rigged or not, but I am definitely confused on order tracking for this promotion.

Facts,

I spent an hour trying to track the next 100,000 winner on Thursday July 2 at 8 PM. :rolleyes:

The position I was trying to get was 95,300,000

The Music Store was very busy at 8 PM. I had placed an order for a song, and had problems with my cart... see previous post.

I was finally able to download the song late July 2nd ~11 PM, and I will concede that it could have possibly been Friday morning at 00+ hours

I received an order receipt email finally on July 5th. It stated that I place the order for the said song on July 4th. False!



Shenanigans!

:p
 
ok guys, this promotion was announced on July 1st, It says on apple's website that the winners will be notified within 3 days, it has been three days and the first couple of winner should have been contacted already. Has anybody been contacted?
 
Apple is reading this thread

I guess it's not much of a surprise but it's still fun to have it "confirmed". My iTunes Music Store Psychedelic Counter was visited by at least one Apple employee (who knows, maybe S.J. himself :p). Since my counter is only linked from here I guess we can conclude that this employee was reading this thread, if only in his/her spare time.

I'll give my opinion about the free entries thing. They are required by law to give a free mean of participating but that doesn't mean that we should be able to participate an infinite number of time. I'm sure they have the right to limit the number of participation from an individual so that it's on par with the average odds of winning for a buying participant.
 
Does anyone have a comprehensive list of all the iTunes song milestones?

In other words:

March 9, 2003 --> 1 million songs sold
April 10, 2003 --> 2 million sold

etc.
etc.

I am trying to run some interesting data and could really use the best available list without having to recompile it. Note: I've seen the two charts referenced in the thread. Both look good, but I really need all the times / dates.

Thanks in advance.
 
jackc said:
That's a strange law. Is that because of discrimination against the poor?
:p I guess I wouldn't be surprised.
Click to expand...

It's because lotteries are gambling. Sweepstakes have to be for promotional purposes only and cannot include entry fees which would make them lotteries, in effect.

There have been -- historically -- many attempts to run illegal lotteries and the gov't doesn't like that.
 
rogo said:
Does anyone have a comprehensive list of all the iTunes song milestones?

In other words:

March 9, 2003 --> 1 million songs sold
April 10, 2003 --> 2 million sold

etc.
etc.

I am trying to run some interesting data and could really use the best available list without having to recompile it. Note: I've seen the two charts referenced in the thread. Both look good, but I really need all the times / dates.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Go to Apple's PR website and you will find all of their press releases including all of the major iTunes milestones.

Later, Frank
 
200 million a year soon?

From these daily graphs http://www.itunesdaily.com/countdown/dailydata.php it looks like Apple's selling a steady 300 to 350 songs a minute. (The first and last days are less useful graphs: both are partial days, and don't show a full cycle of when people buy.)

Even at the low end, 300 songs a minute is 5 a second, or over 3 million a week worldwide.

That's well over 150 million every year, even if sales don't keep growing, which they will.

Perhaps the next landmark is a rate of 200 million per year. That would nicely sidestep Pepsi's failure to get them to 100 million on time :) That would be a rate of 3.85 million per week, or 382 per minute. I bet that's achieved before too long.
 
gekko513 said:
Do you have a download/upload cap on the site perhaps?
Click to expand...
The server lost it's harddrive. Really. :mad:

Will be back up in a day or two. They told me I will get my money back (well, one month max (about 5 songs on iTMS)). :D
 
Frank, I know I could do that. I was hoping a friendly forum member would save me the hours of work it would take to do on my own. :)

Nagromme, I am hoping to compile a report based on the song data that's coming soon from the aforementioned friendly forum member.

But that said, I believe that the total for iTunes in its second year will be at least 300 million. I'm fairly sure that anything less would be a very major disappointment. I'll explain why in the report.
 
rogo said:
Frank, I know I could do that. I was hoping a friendly forum member would save me the hours of work it would take to do on my own. :)

Nagromme, I am hoping to compile a report based on the song data that's coming soon from the aforementioned friendly forum member.

But that said, I believe that the total for iTunes in its second year will be at least 300 million. I'm fairly sure that anything less would be a very major disappointment. I'll explain why in the report.
Click to expand...

I have done it before in these forums in another thread. I didn't save the information on my computer though. It only took about 10 minutes. It isn't like they release 100 press statements per month. You only have to skim through the titles of about a dozen per month, which takes a few seconds.

Later, Frank
 
Tell a Friend comfirmation

Sorry if this has been explained before, but I lost track around page 10.

Anyways, I just sent 2 "Tell a Friends" at the store since it was getting close to a winner. The first one came back with a little screen that said the message was SENT in big red letters. The second one came back and the message read something to the effect of "You're message has been sent to itune100@apple.com."

Does anyone know if that means anything?
 
Just for fun, I'd like to see each day's per-minute data...
http://www.itunesdaily.com/countdown/dailydata.php

...shown also extrapolated as per-hour, per-day, per-week, and per year.

In other words, "IF this day's rate were typical, here's what the bigger picture would be." And you could keep checking to see those trends change over time.

I know that doesn't help with the contest though, it just makes pretty numbers :)
 
Has the game changed? The Apple site now says: 97,000,000+ instead of the exact number.

That would be the smart way to do it, if it stays like that. I guess I can stop "telling my friends" about iTunes.
 
jackc said:
Has the game changed? The Apple site now says: 97,000,000+ instead of the exact number.

That would be the smart way to do it, if it stays like that. I guess I can stop "telling my friends" about iTunes.
Click to expand...

It says 97,827,858 when I pull it up. It must have just been a momentary hiccup...
 
jackc said:
Has the game changed? The Apple site now says: 97,000,000+ instead of the exact number.
Click to expand...
I got a hiccup too:
2004-07-08 06:18:01 97827858
2004-07-08 06:16:01 97827858
2004-07-08 06:14:00 0
2004-07-08 06:12:00 0
2004-07-08 06:10:01 0
2004-07-08 06:08:01 97820302
2004-07-08 06:06:01 97820302
 
Of some note, it seems Apple has taken down the counter, at least for the night... I've visited the site a few times within the past 2 hours from 2am PST until now, and I haven't seen the numbers at all.

Maybe keeping everyone updated was slow sales, who knows. Either that, or they didn't want a rush the second the thing hit the 99,500,000 mark.
 
Those "tell your friend" emails take forever to go through (try sending one to yourself). I'm guessing it's pretty much impossible to time those correctly, which is probably the intention.
 
Don't panic said:
interesting to notice that the promotion is not "working" at selling more songs. (see http://www.itunesdaily.com/countdown/dailydata.php)

It now looks more like an insider thing, aimed at gratifying the faithful.

too bad, because it seemed to me a great idea that with the right advertisement could have significantly increased the bottom line.
Click to expand...

funny you should say that, I never bought anything from Apple online before, and the only Apple products that I knowingly own right now are two Mac classics a school was throwing away, and a lot of old software a former employer was about to dump also.

I've spent more than $150 in this promotion, so far.

Of course, they just sent me a $30 off a purchase of $300 or more from the Apple store. I'm sure they want me to buy an iPod now, which will be the gateway to buying a powerbook or tower eventually :)

(Anyone know when the next invitation-only Apple store event is, that gives you 10% off everything... and how to get invited? :) )
 
iTunes predicter!!!!!

check out nodemons, a mate of mine has written a predicter for the 100 millionth song. It also predicts the 100,000 song points too. Fingers at the ready! :)
 
artifex said:
funny you should say that, I never bought anything from Apple online before, and the only Apple products that I knowingly own right now are two Mac classics a school was throwing away, and a lot of old software a former employer was about to dump also.

I've spent more than $150 in this promotion, so far.

Of course, they just sent me a $30 off a purchase of $300 or more from the Apple store. I'm sure they want me to buy an iPod now, which will be the gateway to buying a powerbook or tower eventually :)
Click to expand...
Artifex,
I happily stand corrected :) (but yesterday was the first time sales went upward, if only slightly, and the statistical relevance is probably low)


from Jyril sig said:
"They say that when you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices...but that's nothing - When you play it forwards it installs Windows."
Click to expand...
:D LOL :D
 
What would be cool...

It would be fun if Apple or someone made a CONSTANTLY animated Java or Flash counter.

The "hard data" may only update every 5 minutes, but the counter would extrapolate, cycling the digits based on the very latest buying rate. (5+ songs a second is the average!)

The extrapolation could aim maybe 2% low--so when the next "real data" hit, the counter would jump up just slightly at that instant. You might never notice. (And if the real data were ever lower than the animation, the counter would simply have to freeze for a few seconds until the latest extrapolation "catches up.")

People have fun with the iTunes counter, aside from the contest. I bet Apple will keep the counter after the promo--only smaller, on the main iTunes page. Constantly cycling digits would be great marketing when people visit iTunes.com to see what the big deal is.
 
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