“Visits to music downloading websites saw a 50 per cent rise on Christmas Day as hundreds of thousands of people began loading songs on to the iPods they received as presents,” Maija Palmer reports for The Financial Times. “According to figures from Hitwise, the online intelligence company, visits to music download sites, such as Apple’s iTunes Music Store, saw a 50 per cent increase between December 24 and 25. Hitwise also found that visits to download sites were 15 per cent higher than last Christmas.”
“Even before the Christmas increase, the BPI, the UK record companies’ trade association, said download sales had topped 23m this year, five times the 4.7m sold in 2004,” Palmer reports. “Some analysts expect Apple to have shipped 37m iPods worldwide by the year-end, with about 10m sold in the key Christmas quarter.”
Full article here.
iTunes Gift Certificates contributed as well. People getting their first iPod would probably be loading CDs into iTunes before buying songs online, but iTunes Music Store customers who got gift certificates most probably were online buying that day.
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Get a Life— get a Mac.
It’s funny how MDN’s take matches my immediate reaction – people were using gift cards. These people who write for Financial Times and whatever else really never understand what they’re writing about.
first post??? maybe..
in will shatner voice: ” must…hurry….thoughts….typing….too…slowly.” (except he wouldn’t have been smart enough to add the “ly” to slowly. doh! )
The FORMS of music sources – CD or iTMS – are probably pretty well mixed. While MDN asserts gift cards were probably a large drive (which I whole heartedly agree), I would contend that if someone had asked for and suspected an iPod for Christmas, it would be a smart choice to go ahead and download iTunes and start ripping a CD collection well before Christmas. As we all know, there are so many cool things that iTunes can do – even without the Music Store and podcasts, TV shows, and Music Videos need no iPod for replay.
Grandma: “Here’s your christmas present, this funny eye-pad-thing. I have no clue what it’s for, but your mother said you would like it.”
Grandchild: “Wow, an iTunes gift card! Let me show you, what it does!”
iTMS: “That 50 per cent rise feels nice!”
I have a younger cousin who I gave a clamshell laptop to over 5 years ago.
For some reason she never used OS x but stayed with OS 9. Recently
she purchased a new Toshiba laptop because she says it’s windown system is more modern than OS 9. I told her to use OS x and then let’s see what she thinks. But her big excuse was she didn’t like the way
Her brother got a nano for christmas and asked her to help him to get songs for it. We’ll as if God interveined, the nano
wouldn’t mount on her machine. I hope the Toshiba explodes on her.
love them. gave an itunes gift cert to a collegue at work, i was her secret santa; and my partner gave me one for xmass. pretty much used up 1/2 of mine the moment i got the email announcement. keep ’em coming.
My girlfriend got a $50 iTunes gift card for Christmas and was on there that evening buying several songs and videos. I’m sure that went on all over the world this past weekend.
Where do the missing pennies go? If Apple sells 10 million gift card at say $25 each over the Xmas holidays and sells songs for $.99 each then after spending each gift card there is $.25 unspent, times 10 million cards, that’s $2.5 million that has no way to be spent. And every new gift card just adds to this. Apple is so frikin’ smart, why didn’t I think of this?
shipwithsails,
Most people would buy an extra song and pay the remaining 74 cents, I would think. At least, that’s what I do.
I know the day after Christmas I decided to buy myself some new music and for the first time the iTMS bogged down on me. Couldn’t even download a music album, but my internet connection was flying. Now thats both a good thing and bad thing. Methinks Apple is gonna have to add some bandwidth to their operation.
the missing pennies goes to the people selling the cards. Target, Best Buy, etc. won’t carry a product for nothing.
sorry… really early in the morning… disregard my lat post.
“I have a younger cousin who I gave a clamshell laptop to over 5 years ago. For some reason she never used OS x but stayed with OS 9.”
She didn’t know what she had.
She didn’t know how to use it.
She didn’t take time to take care of it.
And, not wanting to be too different from her friends and co-workers, just followed the crowd and got a Windows machine.
Up until now she didn’t have a clue as to what a “computer virus” was.
She’s opened up a computer version of a can o’ whupass on herself now.
If she couldn’t take care of an iBook and never upgraded to “X”, opting to buy a Toshiba Best Buy or Office Depot special she deserves what she gets.
“Methinks Apple is gonna have to add some bandwidth to their operation.”
Or… you could wait a couple of days and try again. Or try off peak hours. Dont worry. The music’ll still be there.
My iPod purchase record at Apple is pretty long.
Everyone wanted to buy iPods for them as they couldn’t get any.
rick – “clamshell laptop”
ha, ha, ha you gave a clamshell laptop to someone and don´t know the name. ha. ha.
OS9 sucked – no wonder she was putoff by Macs.
“the nano wouldn’t mount on her machine. “
Trust me – user error.
rick – “I hope the Toshiba explodes on her.”
ah, rick, nothing better than wishing injury or death to someone in the family, right?
Hi I have more of a question than a statement, I was wondering if do people like going to itunes or napster (and other websites) to download music or do you find it boring and find youselves in and out in less than a hour? And if so what do you think is missing?
Do you feel that they care more about money than music?