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iTunes Store Tops Three Billion Songs

Squonk said:
Way to go Apple! The third billion songs in 6 months, the growth is certainly accelerating! :D
Click to expand...

Actually, looking at the graph, it looks like sales have slowed down for the frist time over the last quarter. Not sure if the sales 'slump' was for the iTunes store only or for the whole industry.

Edit: As whooleytoo demonstrated already ^_^
 
It does appear that sales might be slowing. Can someone do an analysis on that data to convert it from cumulative data to approximated sales per quarter, that would be really indicative of the health of iTunes.

Alternatively, post the data points (i.e. dates of press releases and quantities sold) and I'll have a bash...
 
whooleytoo said:
If the chart is correct, it might suggest iTMS sales are starting to peak?
Click to expand...

Seasonal variation probably accounts for some of the curve, but, yes, rate of sales growth will eventually peak. Sales, however, will continue to increase (net) until Apple stops selling music (duh! ;))

A billion songs in 6 months is quite impressive, and I wouldn't be surprised to begin seeing 500 million / month within a couple of years.

The record labels are scared. Very scared.
 
whooleytoo said:
Thanks for the chart.

Interesting to note though, that the rate of sales seems to have gone down in the last period, for the first time; up until then it had always been on the increase. (The chart is concave up until the last data point, then convex).

If the chart is correct, it might suggest iTMS sales are starting to peak?
Click to expand...

Look closely. A similar blip occured in April 2004. I doesn't mean a thing.
 
TitoC said:
Now on to serious business. When is the next iTunes contest with an iPod giveaway? It would make a nice announcement/contest - a multi-touch iPod for a multi-billion year.
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Maybe the 10 billionth song, but I think it will be the millionth TV show, movie, or music video if these have not already been achieved.
 
In other news, executives at Universal Music Group were seen sweating bullets this morning. :eek:
 
samh004 said:
Because they're making money ?
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No, because the distribution channels that they've worked so hard to maintain and control so as to maximize their profits while screwing over the artists and retail outlets are collapsing. And as their response to electronic distribution has been primarily suing people and shutting down file sharing systems, they literally have no clue what to do next as they watch Apple and iTunes race past their expectations at breakneck speed.

Really, I think one of the suckiest places to work right now would be in the music industry (artists notwithstanding.) I can't imagine what kind of panic must be going on there right now.
 
srobert said:
Actually, looking at the graph, it looks like sales have slowed down for the frist time over the last quarter. Not sure if the sales 'slump' was for the iTunes store only or for the whole industry.

Edit: As whooleytoo demonstrated already ^_^
Click to expand...

There are not enough data points to make this conclusion. It is a straight line between 2 and 3 billion because there were no numbers released in between. When it was less than a billion they were releasing numbers more frequently and this allows you to see a curve.
 
samh004 said:
Because they're making money ?
Click to expand...

Exactly, don't you know that they love to just loose it all? JK!
But also, I agree, if you looked at the Eminem post, then you would have seen that the record companies get 60.9 cents for every song sold! I don't think that the record companies are scared.
I think that it is just the time of year. Once the new iPods come in or when the holiday season rolls around, I bet those numbers will skyrocket.
 
dernhelm said:
Look closely. A similar blip occured in April 2004. I doesn't mean a thing.
Click to expand...

You're right (no problems with your eyesight!), there was a similar blip back then, though in this case it's a more marked break with the trend. And, with iTunes sales being so much greater now, it takes a far bigger shift to make a blip on that chart.

I guess we'll see when the next set of figures are released.
 
Craiger77 said:
There are not enough data points to make this conclusion. It is a straight line between 2 and 3 billion because there were no numbers released in between. When it was less than a billion they were releasing numbers more frequently and this allows you to see a curve.
Click to expand...

You're probably right - but it isn't a straight line between 2 and 3 million - there is a data point plotted at 2.5 after which the rate of sales changes (drops) slightly.
 
Squonk said:
Way to go Apple! The third billion songs in 6 months, the growth is certainly accelerating! :D
Click to expand...

No, look at the graph, according to that it's decelerating... The "delta" seems to have decreased in the last part of the graph (it took longer time to get from 2500 millon to 3000 millon than from 2000 to 2500)

Edit: sorry, posted before all others already pointing out this.
 
Craiger77 said:
There are not enough data points to make this conclusion.
Click to expand...

Damn right. If anything, the previous point looks to be anomalously high; the latest announcement fits better with the general trend.

Of course, eventually sales growth will slow down, but I doubt it'll happen for a while yet, what with more attractive purchasing prospects and the continued iPod growth...

[edit] The next announcement will show it better. 5 billion, I expect?
 
And iPhone growth.

I don't think the music cooperations are scared. They are just uncomfortable. Scared is a big word.

Music isn't that important to me any more as it used to be. I have an 8 GB iPod but it's mainly used for sermons and stuff.

I think at the rate music is becoming more and more a part of the youths' lifes, music will become more and more popular to purchase as a product.

Sometimes I think music has become too important in peoples lifes. It's just music. It's a weird thing actually to think about it. People pay for sounds.

But anyway. Nice to see iTunes doing well. Rather they than Wallmart or other distributers.
 
Design, design, design... AND the technology.

aLoC said:
They only opened in 2003, and already are the third largest. That'll learn the incumbents to ignore technology.
Click to expand...

Quite right, but as usual when Apple gets something right, it's not just about technology. The iTunes store is one of the coolest stores on the planet. Apple is so good at designing interface options. All those link arrows that let you switch browsing categories from album to artist to genre... plus a browsing history... you can get around to wherever you want to go without having to retrace your steps, and yet you CAN retrace your steps if you want to. Knowing that makes me willing to explore their little sidebar offerings as I move around the store.

I love the store's front page. Always something different, and intriguing.

The iTunes store turned me into someone who now loves movie trailers. I never thought to just get them off the web or even off Apple web pages but I look at them all the time now when I'm in the iTunes store. Makes me a more frequent DVD customer!
 
dynamicv said:
That's one song for every couple on the planet
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That is EXACTLY what I was gonna post.
Great minds, great minds ...

But yeah, impressive figures :)

Cfour.
 
So why are stock prices down?

With this good news I wonder why stocks are falling off so fast. Wednesday they made it up to $150 in after hours trading, yet closed today at 135.39. One would think that these stocks would keep climbing, just wondering?:cool::cool:
 
Someone post a graph of the derivative of the graph that was posted earlier. It's not the total number of songs that's important, but the rate. Take the derivative of the derivative and we can see the rate at which the sales rate changes. Those two graphs would be far more telling than the originally posted graph.
 
whooleytoo said:
Thanks for the chart.

Interesting to note though, that the rate of sales seems to have gone down in the last period, for the first time; up until then it had always been on the increase. (The chart is concave up until the last data point, then convex).

If the chart is correct, it might suggest iTMS sales are starting to peak?
Click to expand...

That's just a rocket stage being jettisoned. ;)

iTMS sales will, of course, eventually stop growing at an exponential rate, but I can't help but think that it will take a long while for sales to run out of intertia.

To my own horror, I now own 630 songs from iTMS.
 
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