iTunes Countdown to 100 Million

[jbembe]

Apparently, Tell a Friend emails count. So, by the time someone wins the big prize, apple really will have actually only sold 95,000,023 because all the entries will be free emails sent out in the first few minutes after the clicker hits 95 mil. 😀

 

[elliotay]

The confusion is that Apple said they were giving away 50 special 20GB iPods. The grand prize winner is stated to get the 17" powerbook, 10,000 itunes gift certificate, and a 40GB ipod. The confusion lies with the fact that the grand prize winner gets a 20GB ipod AND a 40GB ipod according to the official rules.

 

[mighty quinn]

The confusion is that Apple said they were giving away 50 special 20GB iPods. The grand prize winner is stated to get the 17" powerbook, 10,000 itunes gift certificate, and a 40GB ipod. The confusion lies with the fact that the grand prize winner gets a 20GB ipod AND a 40GB ipod according to the official rules.

from the official rules:
"The 100 Millionth Download Promotion (the “Promotion”) is a sweepstakes promotion in which entrants downloading songs through the iTunes Music Store (“iTunes”) will be eligible to win one of forty-nine 20GB iPods (approximate retail value : US $399) or the grand prize of a 40GB iPod, a 17 inch PowerBook computer"

 

[BlueDjinn]

The confusion is that Apple said they were giving away 50 special 20GB iPods. The grand prize winner is stated to get the 17" powerbook, 10,000 itunes gift certificate, and a 40GB ipod. The confusion lies with the fact that the grand prize winner gets a 20GB ipod AND a 40GB ipod according to the official rules.

Nope, it's actually 49 20GB iPods and 1 40GB (+PBook & gift certificate):

From the official rules:

"...one of forty-nine 20GB iPods (approximate retail value : US $399) or the grand prize of a 40GB iPod, a 17 inch PowerBook computer, and a gift certificate redeemable for 10,000 songs from iTunes..."

 

[elliotay]

mighty quinn: Thanks for the info. I didn't see that part in the official rules. Well it seems like apple is contradicting themselves then because at the top of the page it definitely states: "Apple will begin the countdown to 100 million songs by giving away 50 special 20GB iPods". Weird.

 

[mighty quinn]

Tell a Friend

The tell a friend option is confusing.

Does it mean that you enter your own email when you "tell-a friend"? or does it mean that you enter somebody else's email and then you are entered for the prize.

Also, how do email submissions count toward the song total. Does a tell-a friend email count as a song purchase in the countdown?

I am pretty tired, but I'm not getting this tell-a friend option.

edit: " One 20GB iPod will be awarded for each Entry sent immediately following the 99,999th song downloaded, until iTunes reaches its 100 millionth Entry.".... maybe this means that the email doesn't count toward a song in the countdown, so ...99,999 songs have to be sold before an email entry will let you win. Then I guess buying a bunch of songs at once (like an album) would have an advantage over the email submission. I still have no idea though.. just a guess.

 

[Freg3000]

Why does this make little sense? Makes perfect sense to me:

951 = 1
952 = 2
953 = 3
(etc...)
998 = 48
999 = 49
1,000 = 50

Where's the confusion?

As pointed out by elliotay, the initial confusion stemmed from the fact that for most of the day Apple was saying that they'd be giving away 50 20 GB iPods....heck he/she explained it well enough already.

No more confusion. I still think it is rather stupid though. Why such "ugly" numbers? 95.1 million and 49? Why not just go for 95 million and 50? 😕

Edit: Apple still says 50 20GB iPods on the promotion page (although they have modified the homepage to reflect 50 "iPods" (49 20GBs+ 1 40GB).)

...Apple will begin the countdown to 100 million songs by giving away 50 special 20GB iPods

 

[savar]

What will I do with 10000 songs?

I wonder if it counts your purchase when you click buy, or when each individual song finished downloading?

I would imagine that the counter is linked to payment approval. So you get counted a little after you click "Buy" and just before it begins to download.

What I am wondering about is how the "No Purchase Necessary" will work. It says:

a free alternative means of sending an email to Apple at itunes100@apple.com via the iTunes “Tell a Friend” feature (a song download or Tell a Friend email will be deemed an “Entry(ies”). The “Tell a Friend” feature can be easily accessed at iTunes by selecting a song, and clicking the “Tell a Friend” link that is displayed for that song. One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded or Tell a Friend email sent.

So does the counter on Apple.com include these free entries or not? I would assume no since they are counting sales to boast to the world their success. So are there really two counters? If so, then the real one is hidden, and 100,000,000 will be reached while the counter on Apple.com still reads 99,782,383 or something. If there is only one counter, then I suppose this means that if you submit a free entry right after the 999,999,999th song download, then you win.

The prize package is worth spending a few minutes thinking about this.

 

[Makosuke]

edit: " One 20GB iPod will be awarded for each Entry sent immediately following the 99,999th song downloaded, until iTunes reaches its 100 millionth Entry.".... maybe this means that the email doesn't count toward a song in the countdown, so ...99,999 songs have to be sold before an email entry will let you win. Then I guess buying a bunch of songs at once (like an album) would have an advantage over the email submission. I still have no idea though.. just a guess.

That is exactly correct. After each 99,999 songs have been sold (starting at 95,099,999 songs), the first "entry" received will win the iPod. An entry can be either a song purchased, or an email sent to "...itunes100@apple.com via the iTunes "Tell a Friend" feature".

So, if somebody buys a song right after number 99,999, then that person wins. If Apple gets a (non-automated) e-mail to the address above via the Tell a Friend feature before anybody buys a song, then whoever sent that e-mail wins. If both happen at the same time, then they pick randomly.

The e-mails clearly do NOT count against the total--the only time they'll make a difference is if Apple gets one after a 99,999 purchase and before a 100,000 purchase, in which case that person wins an iPod but still doesn't advance the count.

That would mean that people buying albums are far more likely to win, since their purchase would drive the count directly from, say, 99,995 to 100,008, with no room for an e-mail to squeeze in between.

Personally, I'd say the e-mail thing is kinda cheesy, and it seems like there should have been some way to wrangle things into a less clock-watching "no purchase necessary" clause, but I suppose they didn't have a lot of choice under US law.

 

[amols]

Alright...here we go. Let the countdown begin.

 

[Bob Knob]

1:45 am (US Pacific time)

95,002,244

 

[dantec]

Seems to me like they hit a brick wall... Now the rate at which they are selling songs seems to have fallen...

Stupid me, I bought 2 songs right before the 50 mill mark ! I should have caught up with the reading on this thread before doing so !! 😡

Oh well... Now we are going to all wait for 95,099,999 !

edit : Has anyone seen the iPod + iTunes video at http://www.apple.com/itunes/video/ which was shown at the London music event & WWDC ?

Whats the music from the video ? Thats a song to buy...

edit 2 : The song is 'Walkie Talkie man' from Steriogram. Here is the link to the album.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=7774133

 

[grouse]

morning all...

Okay, updating my predictions from yesterday,,,

I reckoned 7:30am for the 95mill mark, and that turned out to be about 2 hours early. Of course since we haven't had a full days stats yet, we can't work out what are the peaks and troughs of a normal Thursday/Friday in summer!

We are now at the slowest rate so far, not too surprising given that most of you transatlantic folk should be in bed, and in the UK the ipod itunes media types aren't known as early risers. But are we beginning to see a trend around the magic multiple of 100,000 mark. A lot of people won't have been reading these boards and might have guessed that one was going at the 95mil mark. And the rate did increase (see http://ym.muda.org/kurt/apple/) massively at that time (up from 140 per min average to 470 per min).

So questions are:

Is 5:00EST generally the quiestest selling time?

How slow are the sales going to get when we get near to the BIG prize, (there'll be an "after you" mentality surely)?

And how widely is this being promoted? I notice it's on the music store front page now, but will they email folk about it, along with the new music tuesday's promo? (assuming the competition runs that long, it might well finish before then)

And what is the album on iTunes with the most number of tracks? That could well rise up the charts?

And, by the way, based on the limited stats so far, it looks like the UK, German and French sales were down in the second week.

(PS do you think they'll keep the ticker stats available after the promotion?, or does it give away too much info to "rivals"?)

Also, - possibly interesting stat: in the US you'd have to buy no more than 402 songs to make it worth your while winning the 20GB ipod, in the UK you'd have to buy no more than 378 songs to still be up on the deal (although you'd still own the music, it's not like lottery tickets), and in Germany and France, you'd be able to buy 453 songs and win (you'd be up net .50 cents or so!) before you'd spent the cost of the prize.

Actually, that means, on a iTMS song/ipod cost exchange ladder, the 20GB iPod is best value in the UK and worst in Euroland. Go figure.

x

(of course, I may well have got all this completely arse about face, but if any americans are still reading in the small hours of the morning, it's really gonna play with their sleep-deprived heads!)

rate's just reached it's lowest on record, 109 per min.

 

[iMeowbot]

In order to be eligible, entrants must be 13 years of age or older, and a legal resident of one of the 50 United States, including Washington, D.C., the United Kingdom, France or Germany

When did those last three join the US, and who are the states we kicked out?

 

[grouse]

is everyone asleep?

90 songs per min....

15 hours at this rate!@

 

[Applespider]

And what is the album on iTunes with the most number of tracks? That could well rise up the charts?

Not sure if it's the one with the most tracks but I did notice there's a Scooter (German techno/dance for those unaware) album called 24 karat gold which has 24 tracks and only costs £7.99

 

[backspinner]

is everyone asleep?

Well, as you can see on

http://itunescount.tijdweb.nl​

it does slow down but the last three hours it's quite stable. Must be Europe where it's normal daytime now.

 

[suneun]

"tell a friend"

Actually, I think it's done really intelligently.

Any "tell a friend" e-mails sent in are ignored until the 99,999th song has been sold. Right after the 99,999th song has been sold, they check to see what happens next: a purchase or an email. In cases of "simultaneous entry," they do a random picking from those entries. So the e-mails won't be included in the counter, which would have been silly.

An attempt at scripting the e-mail entries will get you kicked out of the entire contest.

Course, I wonder how long it takes the e-mail to get to them. Depends on your own server, but also how long it takes Apple to process that jump in e-mails.

 

[suneun]

One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded

Hm. Looks like the best way would be to download an album with really short songs. Doesn't look like they're choosing based on credit card purchase, but with completed downloads.

 

[backspinner]

people are realy waiting for the gifts: watch the green spike on the 95 million mark on http://itunescount.tijdweb.nl

 

[m.r.m.]

Not sure if it's the one with the most tracks but I did notice there's a Scooter (German techno/dance for those unaware) album called 24 karat gold which has 24 tracks and only costs £7.99

believe me, winning the powerbook isn't worth buying their album. 😀

 

[Hattig]

Actually, I think it's done really intelligently.

I think it would have been simpler to just pick an iPod winner from the 100,000 songs puchased (95.0m to 95.099999m), one song == 1 entry, and 1 e-mail == 1 entry, max 1 entry per e-mail address per 100k songs.

 

[fracai]

tell-a-friend doesn't count? read agani

How To Enter. You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by: 1) downloading a song from iTunes (any Free Download Single of the Week will be deemed an ineligible entry); or 2) a free alternative means of sending an email to Apple at itunes100@apple.com via the iTunes “Tell a Friend” feature (a song download or Tell a Friend email will be deemed an “Entry(ies”). The “Tell a Friend” feature can be easily accessed at iTunes by selecting a song, and clicking the “Tell a Friend” link that is displayed for that song. One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded or Tell a Friend email sent. The Promotion begins following the downloading of the 95,000,000th iTunes song, and ends with the downloading of the 100 millionth Entry (“End Date”). Only Entries submitted in this time period will be accepted.

focus on the "downloadng of the 100 millionth Entry"

Seems pretty clear to me that tell a friend entries don't count towards the start of the contest, but they absolutely count towards the end of the contest and thus the prizes. Purchasing songs DOES NOT give you an advantage over tell a friend.

I think the only thing Apple has failed to do in this promotion, is get the word out. They should have mentioned something about it at WWDC and started an add campaign a week or two ago. "In the next few weeks iTunes will sell (sell, give away, download, tell a friend...whatever, sell sounds better) it's 100,000,000 song. but that's not all you can get" or something equally as cheesy would have been great to get the word out.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the friend telling does count towards the count.

 

[fracai]

(any Free Download Single of the Week will be deemed an ineligible entry);

thought this was pretty interesting too

anyone looking for a real good deal should look at Live from Atlanta, GA - New Years by Widespread Panic

If it's still available it's about 9 discs worth of music for about $20
They're a jam band in the style of Phish with that southern kick. And by that I don't mean country music. 😉

 

[gekko513]

Hmm, maybe Apple has just provided us with a lesson on "How to Successfully Launch a DoS Attack on Yourself"... 😉

I can't get the images on apple.com to load properly. Maybe Apple actually succeeded in launching a DoS attack on themselves. 😀