iTunes Share of U.S. Music Sales Reaches 25%

[nkawtg72]

I think what he was pointing out is if only apple would open it up so you would not have to pay extra for the privilege to do it.

I do not consider the DRM free songs in the same area as DRM.

Also not all of the iTunes songs can be bought with out DRM.

that's not correct. DRM has been dropped completely. i know there was a transition period in providing all the songs in the store as DRM free, but as i understand, they are now 100% DRM free

here's some additional info on the new business model
http://www.macworld.com/article/138000/2009/01/drm_faq.html


edit:
the $.30 people are referring to also only applies to upgrading your existing library. see article linked above. as for the 3-tier pricing, that doesn't have any baring on whether a track is DRM free or not

 

[dam0dred]

I'm glad iTunes is doing well, it's a great service.

But man it needs a redesign. It is looking incredibly dated.

 

[shiseiryu1]

Good point, and while I agree with you, I'm guessing it's because since you already purchased the app, a refund would essentially be "giving" it to you for free, even if it can no longer have updates since it was pulled. (plus they lose out on their 30% take) I think since they feel you willingly purchased the app, it's yours, regardless of what happens to it in the future. That being said, I still hate the fact that there's no trial period on apps.

I would agree with you except for the fact that my experience so far has been that when an app is removed from the app store it magically "disappears" from my iPhone or if it still on my phone it is unusable. If it was still working on my phone I wouldn't mind if they kept my money...however, as of late the apps that they remove from the store they also disable/remove from my phone. That doesn't seem fair.

 

[nkawtg72]

I'm glad iTunes is doing well, it's a great service.

But man it needs a redesign. It is looking incredibly dated.

i agree. browsing music and apps is awful. i've got a beautiful 24" iMac and i can't even take advantage of it in the store.

should have the ability to select how many songs, albums, apps appear on a page when doing searches. as well as the ability to resize their icons. that would help a lot.

 

[shiseiryu1]

What apps were those? I was not aware that they'd done that with any apps up to this point.

I have one or two apps that have been removed from the store, but I still have the app on my phone and my computer.

Apple does have the ability to do what you've described, but I just hadn't heard about that happening yet.

One was the Hottest Girls app that was removed b/c of mature content. The other was "SideSlip" which was a StumbleUpon client app. In both cases the app was either disabled/removed on my phone after Apple removed it from the store.

 

[shiseiryu1]

You don't receive your money back, but they don't remove the app from your device either. This is not a flaw and that's the way it should be. You paid for it, you got it. Transaction complete.

If I went out and bought Adobe GoLive last year, do you think Adobe will give me my money back when they stopped selling it this year? Not a chance.

They did remove it from my device...that's why I'm annoyed. If they let me keep the apps I wouldn't mind.

 

[nkawtg72]

I would agree with you except for the fact that my experience so far has been that when an app is removed from the app store it magically "disappears" from my iPhone or if it still on my phone it is unusable. If it was still working on my phone I wouldn't mind if they kept my money...however, as of late the apps that they remove from the store they also disable/remove from my phone. That doesn't seem fair.

which apps are those?!?!?! as it has been stated, there has not been a confirmed case of this happening.

as to whether an app remains functional or not would depend on several things. does it require information from a server, in this case the developer? if so, more than likely the dev has pulled the plug on the project since it has been yanked.

or has a recent update to the iPhone OS caused the app to fail, and since it is no longer supported, an update is not in the works to fix the problem.

again. apple pulling the app from you library and/or device, ie making it disappear, has to no ones knowledge ever occurred.

again, which apps did this happen with?

 

[shiseiryu1]

Could you expand upon that?
There was the furor over Amazon's yanking of content for the Kindle App, but I've never heard of Apple removing an app from a user's phone. Pulling an app from the store doesn't pull it from a phone to which it's been downloaded.
If you've experience otherwise, you have a scoop.

(Yes, I understand that ability to yank apps from a device is possible in order to control rogue apps, but I've yet to hear of it actually being done.)

"SideSlip"...a StumbleUpon client was autoremoved from my iPhone somehow... at first I thought maybe I accidentally deleted it and tried to redownload it only to find it was "no longer available". You can't buy it now and you can't seem to reinstall it so I asked for my money back and they refunded me.

 

[shiseiryu1]

Apple != Amazon.

Apple doesn't remove software from the iPhone or Touch.

shiseiryu1 is either mistaken or he just made that up.

It may be possible that I made a mistake but I definitely didn't make it up. Apple refunded me the money for the SideSlip app that was removed from my phone.

 

[shiseiryu1]

You have mentioned the reason that I have been staying away from the iPod Touch/iPhone area. I believe that no company, Apple included, should have any control on what I legally loaded onto that computer device. The ability of Apple to take Apps off of my Apple equipment is more power than they should have.

Having only one source of software for any device is not in my normal way of doing business. This sounds like a recreated Microsoft. Many people here will do anything that they can to do away with the control that Microsoft wields, but they fall in lock step when Apple does the same thing. They say it is not the same. It probably isn't really as in most cases Microsoft allows third parties to write & sell software without their approval or consent.

Regardless of how good or bad that one believes that the iTunes App Store is, it should only be one source of applications for any device.

I have been a Mac User for over 25 years now & have never bought a MS-DOS or Windows computer other than my Intel Mac Pro. So I am a long time die hard Mac User & purchaser. I just do not like Apple taking 100% control of "MY" computer. If this hapens then it becomes "APPLE'S" computer, but just located at my house.

I see your point, however, I actually wouldn't mind Apple creating an App Store for iMacs/Macbooks/iTablets (if it ever comes to fruition). What I do like about the app store is:

1. You can quickly and easily download apps both free and paid.
2. You don't have to enter stupid serial numbers etc because Apple already verifies that you paid for the app.
3. You can redownload apps if you accidently delete them.
4. Users have a central place where they can give feedback...if you buy an app from a developers website there is no way to know whether the app is good or not (especially if it is a small developer and not Adobe or something).
5. It supports smaller developers.

What I don't like about the App Store is:

1. Potential for Apple to remove apps from your device without issuing refund
2. Too much control over type of apps that are allowed.

Cheers.

 

[shiseiryu1]

i agree. browsing music and apps is awful. i've got a beautiful 24" iMac and i can't even take advantage of it in the store.

should have the ability to select how many songs, albums, apps appear on a page when doing searches. as well as the ability to resize their icons. that would help a lot.

I tend to agree with you. I actually enjoy browsing/buying music on my phone as opposed to the computer. iTunes is in need of a redesign.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

We are in the digital age and has been for a while. People prefer to acquire their music digitally and on the go. Apple provides both with iTunes. This makes sense.

 

[lkrupp]

Perhaps it hasn't quite reached its saturation point yet... impressive. I think a potential downside is that there's no evidence that the three-tier pricing system (which I hate) is stifling sales....

It just shows that, to the general music buying public, this is not an issue. We (the types that moderate, read, and post in forums like this) look at issues like this from a completely different perspective. For example, some of "us" continue to harp about everything from AAC bit rates, the subscription business model (although every subscription service has failed so far), being locked into iTunes, and so-on-and-so-on. These show stopping issues (for some) just don't matter to the general user population but "we" refuse to accept that fact and can't understand why they don't bother most users.

 

[xIGmanIx]

Equate it to the number of PCs compromised by the malware infections every single installation of Limewire causes ...

All those poor, ignorant, Windows users and their free music. Isn't quite as free when you need to reformat your computer once a month or more often than this, is it?

Congratulations, iTunes. We love you (especially since you went DRM-free) but you need to lose some weight, please. You taste great, but need less bloat filling.

EDIT: Oh, and you Mac Limewire users are idiots too. The Darwin code won't protect you forever.

easy fan boy, exaggerate much?

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

We are in the digital age and has been for a while. People prefer to acquire their music digitally and on the go. Apple provides both with iTunes. This makes sense.

i will be honest, i thought that digital downloads had a greater market share than the roughtly 1/3 they have now. i would be interested to see apple's market share of the digital downloads to see if any of the other offerings are either losing or gaining. I guess i didn't realize that hard copy still dominates, but its good to see options for consumers.

 

[DELLsFan]

easy fan boy, exaggerate much?

Not really. But I can understand how some folks might take offense. Not every Windows user is a moron. Sorry if you thought I implied otherwise. So ... let me rephrase:

All those poor, ignorant Windows users who use Limewire ... that music isn't quite free if you have to reformat your hard drive(s) every month (or more often) is it?

 

[BongoBanger]

Not really. But I can understand how some folks might take offense. Not every Windows user is a moron. Sorry if you thought I implied otherwise. So ... let me rephrase:

All those poor, ignorant Windows users who use Limewire ... that music isn't quite free if you have to reformat your hard drive(s) every month (or more often) is it?

Limewire: Separating out the stupid people from the rest of us since 2003.

 

[Master Chief]

We are in the digital age and has been for a while. People prefer to acquire their music digitally and on the go. Apple provides both with iTunes. This makes sense.

Not exactly. Most people, as in 65% of the 3 million people – the folks who volunteered ("registered participants") to share data with NPD (Consumer Tracking) still prefer to purchase CD's over digital content.

Not to mention that Apple has a market share of only 25% of that very same 35% (making it more like 18%). And what's more important is that there's no mention about Apple/iTunes; I mean if they use Apple/iTunes or not, which is a very important, but missing factor in this report.

 

[manu chao]

One bad thing that I've noticed about iTunes recently though is if you buy an App from the App Store and then it is later revoked/removed, you do not automatically receive your money back. I think this is a serious flaw and if Apple is going remove Apps they need to auto-refund customers as well. If they don't fix this, it will erode consumer confidence in the App Store. I've had several apps removed from my phone now that I've had to email apple support about to get my refund. That's just unacceptable and there is no excuse for it.

In all brevity, WTF?
When you have bought (and downloaded) an app, you can keep it forever. Apple does not delete it from your computer.

 

[Bjohnson33]

That jump in percent from 2007 to 2009 is huge! It will be interesting to see how the sales numbers change over the next 5 to 10 years.

 

[iphones4evry1]

There goes Apple's opening statement for the Media Event.

"iTunes now accounts for 25% of all music sales" (3 people audience say "Wow!" while most people say "yeah, we read that on Macrumors two weeks ago."

CDs still account for 65% of music sales??????????????
Wow! I thought CDs had disappeared several years ago. I have a CD player in my car and whenever I change the CD, my friends look at me like it's an ancient 8-track or something. Hmmm. I didn't realize they even sold CDs anymore.
So what does this say about me and others that haven't seen a CD in a store in ages? Are CDs obsolete, or have WE just hit a point in history in which half of society is living in the future and half of society is stuck behind living in with the past's ancient technology?

 

[JGowan]

You have mentioned the reason that I have been staying away from the iPod Touch/iPhone area. I believe that no company, Apple included, should have any control on what I legally loaded onto that computer device. The ability of Apple to take Apps off of my Apple equipment is more power than they should have.

You've got your facts mixed. While Apple has the power to remove apps, they've yet to do so. I believe this power your talking of is purely there to remove a malicious app that might do your phone or the network harm. I've never heard of a single incident that they've done this. They've removed apps from the store (including an App that crossed the line with nudity), but they didn't remove the app from the phones of people who had already bought. They recently decided to not consider new book Apps and removing as many as 1000 apps where copyright was in question. They didn't, however, remove ANY book apps from iPhone users. NONE.

Amazon is another story. They recently got a lot of BAD ink from the public and the press for removing purchased content from Kindles and refunded the money. One of the most notable books was "1984". People were LIVID. And rightly so.

Apple has NOT done this. I've seen a number of posts here on this thread where people (such as yourself) is putting this misinformation out there. That is not cool. If you have actual proof that you can link to, fine. Do so. But just rambling on about what you deem the truth without so much as a link is plain wrong. I didn't link to the Amazon fiasco because it is known far and wide and it happened to A LOT of people. Isolated incidences aside (which I'm totally unaware of), Apple has not not used or abuse any technical ability they may have.

Or spend $0.30 on a CD-RW and burn them as audio CD and re-rip. A little time consuming, but something I've done with my favorite 100-200 tracks I've purchased, by reburning 10-15 CD's. Something I was able to do passively while surfing the web.

Depending on which version of iTunes you have, there's this little mac program called Requiem...

 

[Target362]

I bought a boat load of music from iTunes few months back, might have helped out some to make it to 25%

 

[twoodcc]

wow. now that is some serious marketshare for apple. keep it up

 

[cretony38]

Congrats...you have won the thread hahah.

With the amount of iPods out there and the amount of ignorant consumers who probably now realize that their music they have been buying over the years will only work on an iPod.

Um no you can take the files out of the library and burn 'em if you like.

 

[HyperZboy]

that's not correct. DRM has been dropped completely. i know there was a transition period in providing all the songs in the store as DRM free, but as i understand, they are now 100% DRM free

here's some additional info on the new business model
http://www.macworld.com/article/138000/2009/01/drm_faq.html


edit:
the $.30 people are referring to also only applies to upgrading your existing library. see article linked above. as for the 3-tier pricing, that doesn't have any baring on whether a track is DRM free or not

This Apple policy to un-DRM music kind of sucks and is a rip-off even at only 30¢ considering some of my music is now CHEAPER than what I paid for it and most people can download the same track today WITHOUT DRM.

And yet I have to pay MORE MONEY to Non-DRM my music?

It's just a sleazy policy, but I'm sure the record companies forced it on Apple.