Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over five billion songs from the iTunes Store. iTunes is the number one music retailer in the US and features the largest music catalog with over eight million songs.
MacDailyNews Note: On February 26, 2008, Apple announced they had hit the 4 billion songs sold mark. They’ve now sold over 1 billion more songs in just the last four months or 250 million songs per (non-holiday, non-gift card) month on average.
Also, iTunes customers are now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, making iTunes the world’s most popular online movie store.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s quite the “hobby.” Apple is now selling or renting 1.5 million movies per month. Hello, Wall Street? Alternate headline: “Netflix execs use pants as toilets.”
iTunes features movies from all of the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. Users can rent movies and watch them on their Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV. iTunes Store customers can also purchase new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios on the same day as their DVD release.
The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over eight million songs, over 20,000 TV episodes and over 2,000 films including over 350 in stunning high definition video. With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as iTunes Movie Rentals, integrated podcasting support, iMix playlist sharing, the ability to turn previously purchased tracks into complete albums at a reduced price, and seamless integration with iPod and iPhone, the iTunes Store is the best way for Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music and video online.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Note:
The Apple iTunes Store Milestones:
• June 19, 2008: 5 billion songs sold.
• February 26, 2008: 4 billion songs sold.
• July 31, 2007: 3 billion songs sold.
• April 09, 2007: 2.5 billion songs sold.
• January 09, 2007: 2 billion songs sold.
• February 23, 2006: 1 billion songs sold.
• February 7, 2006: 950 million songs sold.
• January 9, 2006: 850 million songs sold.
• October 25, 2005: Available in Australia.
• August 4, 2005: Available in Japan.
• July 17, 2005: 500 million songs sold.
• May 10, 2005: 400 million songs sold. Available in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
• January 24, 2005: 250 million songs sold.
• December 16, 2004: 200 million songs sold.
• December 2, 2004: Available in Canada.
• October 26, 2004: Available in the European Union.
• October 14, 2004: 150 million songs sold.
• July 12, 2004: 100 million songs sold.
• June 15, 2004: Available in UK France Germany.
• April 28, 2004: 70 million songs sold.
• March 15, 2004: 50 million songs sold.
• December 15, 2003: 25 million songs sold.
• October 16, 2003: Available for windows. 13 million songs sold.
• September 8, 2003: 10 million songs sold.
• June 23, 2003: 5 million songs sold.
• May 14, 2003: 2 million songs sold.
• May 5, 2003: One million songs sold.
• April 28, 2003: Launched in United States.
I hope that we don’t find out that the 50,000 movie rentals are mainly people going for the 99¢ movie rental on Tuesdays.
I will have to say that when you look at this movies and the associated list of what other people rented it includes all of the other 99¢ movies.
iTunes, bitch!
Looks like sales are still accelerating. Won’t be long before the entire music industry implodes, now that customers have the upper hand and can buy only the tracks they want. This should be fun to watch.
Napster VP: “Will there be an alarm bell when it’s time to panic or was that it?”
Blockbuster VP: “That was it.”
Awesome – it good to see that AppleTV 2.0 seems to be getting better acceptance and the rental model is being used. Now if we could just keep the rented movies for longer than 24 hours after we start watching them.
As for me – I rent on average 1 – 2 movies from iTunes per week and am very happy with both the download streaming speed as well as the video quality – with a 60″ HDTV.
Way to go Apple!
This is nuts!
I love it, I love Apple, I am full of love today!
Too bad I am married with children 🙁
Oh, and I forgot about TWC, once they put limit on downloads, the sales might go down.
Is there anything we can do to stop TWC from doing this stupid move?
I wish there was fiber provider in my area so I could switch.
Future Day #1: Apple adds a way to surf the web from it, and an OTA HD tuner for HD locals.
Future Day #2: I buy two more Apple TV’s (have a 160gb one now) and then I place the call to DirecTV…”Hello DirecTV…bu bye”
In other news, the iPod Killer’s prison sentence was just changed from life in solitary confinement to death.
@Rob
Don’t worry about TWC. I’m sure that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Yahoo, have already planned out their demise. They won’t allow this to happen.
TimeWarner/ATT/Comcast enjoy your profits now. I imagine consumers won’t be paying for net access much longer.
…… and the hits just keep on comin’
” ….. I hope that we don’t find out that the 50,000 movie rentals are mainly people going for the 99¢ movie rental on Tuesdays ….. “
I didn’t even know about 99¢ Tuesdays! Thanks for the heads up. (Where the hell have I been?) I don’t even have an Apple TV. I download to my iPhone and plug into regular TV with RCA jacks.
But now I have a very serious question:
How in the hell do you create the “cents” mark on your keyboard?! WTF!! And I call myself a designer.
Approx. 3 years to sell 1st billion. 1 year to sell 2nd billion. 6 months to sell 3rd and 4th billion. 4 months to sell 5th billion….. That’s an impressive growth curve!
BTW, it is amazing that iTunes’ servers and backend can deal with this kind of growth curve. Hugely impressive that they don’t have dropouts and outages!
So, if this growth rate continues, how many years until they reach TS (terasong)?
So, the iTune Store is now at a rate of selling 5.5 M songs per DAY!
Not too shabby…
@ Dumb x2
cent mark (¢) <– option key – 4 or option key – $
Wow, Apple does keep sales statistics! Considering Apple’s failure to provide sales data for its other products, I thought no one at Apple had a clue how well its products were selling.
How about sales statistics for MBA, iMac, MacPro, etc. Hmmm? Maybe these numbers are not so “positive” or are not so “newsworthy”.
Oh, well, nothing like a little Apple propaganda to keep the fanbois in state of ignorant bliss.
@ Dumb x2
You should learn how to use the option/alt key. It’s pretty cool.
to get a ‘¢’ press “alt+4”.
The option key gives you all sorts of cool signs like
¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷
and alt+shift gives you
⁄€‹›fifl‡°·‚—±ÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚÆŒ„´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏”’¸˛Ç◊ı˜Â¯˘¿
Here is to for being so cool.
That is an insane growth rate on music sales – we could easily see 7 billion by Christmas!!
MW ‘what’ as in what the f…?
To Ha, ha:
At least you get points for trying… but there simply isn’t any way to spin this against Apple, try it as you may.
fef????
feb26nd-june19th=114 days.
1 billion songs in 114 days makes 8,77 million a day.
that is amazing.
Alternate headline: Blockbuster & NetFlix ponder pant loads, as iTunes positions to crush the physical movie rental market.
Ha, ha…
I spoke to Steve, Phil, Tim and the boys and they agreed that they should publish all of that market-sensitive information about how many models they sell right down to which options customers choose.
About the time that Microsoft publishes honest statistics about how many Vista and Windows Mobile licences are actually in use by real users as opposed to locked up in a safe at an OEM manufacturer in Taiwan.
And also about the time that HP, Dell and the rest of the WinDell gang do the same thing.
Tell me, when you go on holiday, does your village have to go to a temp agency for a stand-in idiot or do you have a permanent deputy?
¢¢¢¢¢¢¢
Now my mac life is complete.
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Thanks.
Poor, sad little fanboi Ha, ha.
For the record, Apple DOES keep sales figures (it took me a whopping 30 seconds to look them up- So please?
Keep your inability to Google to yourself.
Moo…
I think what he wants – other than a generous supply of drugs – is for Apple to provide detail of exactly how many of each product it sells, as per the ludicrous analysts who turn up at every conference call and try to find new ways of phrasing the question so that Tim Cook falls for their clever subterfuge.
50,000 movies is very impressive when you compare movie playback options to song options. Maybe the studios will improve the selection now. That would add 4-5 shows per month at our house.
Well done Apple!
It is definitely good news that iTS DL rate is increasing once again. For a while it looked like there was going to be a plateau in sales growth.
It would be good to have low cost alternatives to cable / dsl. If internet throttling becomes rampant, the gov’t should look into monopolistic practices and make cable / dsl / satellite distribution independent of content providers.
Good news is that I’m now an American citizen and will be able exercise my opinion at the polling booth.
@ ralph from berlin:
u r right…
I just took the six month period as an “perceived average” if the term exists, and made some calculations from there.
The thing is Apple took almost 3 years to sell 1 billion songs. As sales expanded in 2006, it was taking just 1 yr (roughly) to sell another billion. And the next year roughly 6 months (Jan9 – Jul31’07 / Jul31’07 – Feb26’08 / Feb26 – Jun19’08) and accelerating!
How do you get ¢ on an iPhone????
What other items in history have sold as 5 billion items???
McDonald’s Hamburgers . . .
Zune Tang. Let’s hear the Zune numbers. To keep in mind just how many downloads that is, a billion minutes ago, Jesus wasnt even born yet.
Doesn’t Apple know that subscriptions are where it is at? Man, they’ll never learn.
I was against the iTunes rentals at first, but it’s so quick and easy that I find myself doing it from time to time, especially with the $.99 weekly deal. Still wish for improvements.
I also hate the way movies look on the iPhone. You lose so much screen real estate to those big black widescreen bars but when you zoom in, you’re losing like 25% of the picture. There has to be a better way than that.
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
I feel so much better now -sorry
I own TV and love it. But as a Netflix subscriber, I’ve also found the $99 ROKU box very useful. Since it’s free to watch any and all of Netflix’s instant content, it compliments my TV very well with content that’s just not offered by Apple (yet).
Not a good day for the poor sucker who manages MS’s Zune Store.
Apple WINS!!
Time 4 Months
Songs Sold 1 Billion
Revenue stream 33 cents per song to Apple
1,000,000,000 * $0.33 = $330,000,000 / 4 months = $82,500,000 per month in revenue.
I think that says it all.
Didn’t they announce 4 billion on January 9th at MacWorld?
@Ha, ha,
You think you’re Zune Tang, but you’re not!
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MCCFR:
”I spoke to Steve, Phil, Tim and the boys….”
Liar, pathetic liar, transparent liar.
”… and they agreed that they should publish all of that market-sensitive information about how many models they sell right down to which options customers choose.”
So, Apple ONLY announces news that benefits the propagandists and market fixers. That is, Apple is reluctant to reveal any information that doesn’t promote the myth of perpetual positive slope.
”About the time that Microsoft publishes honest statistics about how many Vista and Windows Mobile licences are actually in use by real users as opposed to locked up in a safe at an OEM manufacturer in Taiwan. And also about the time that HP, Dell and the rest of the WinDell gang do the same thing.”
According to you, Apple should be as dishonest, disreputable, fraudulent, corrupt, unethical, untrustworthy, deceitful, and unscrupulous as others. Well, you must be right! By the way, that was the same point I was making. Thanks for agreeing with me.
Maybe Apple should change its motto from “Think Different” to “We perform as well as Microsoft and Dell, really.”.
Can these morons now stop giving ATV such a hard time on the net. You know who you are your moronic bloggers. You just got “OWNED”!!!! I hate using that alternate geek word… LOL
HMCIV:
“You think you’re Zune Tang,…”
Never said I was.
“but you’re not!”
Thanks for the compliment!
@haha….
“”I spoke to Steve, Phil, Tim and the boys….”
Liar, pathetic liar, transparent liar.”
It’s called hyperbole… look it up.
Wow, Mr ‘ha ha’ found a thesaurus.
Poor sucker shouldn’t be laughing.
I’m sorry I’m being so rude.
I’m just coming to terms with my latent homosexuality.
It makes me feel good to troll mac sites and goad the commenters.
Makes me feel important.
Ha ha:
Thanks for sharing.
There’s a helpline available if you need to talk.
You don’t have to go through this alone.
@Ha, Ha
You didn’t have to say it. My new MacBook Air can read your mind!!!! That’s also how I knew about you coming to terms with the latent thesaurus thing.
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Jim-TIV,
Hyperbole (noun), the practice of idiocy employed by Apple fanbois when facts and common sense escape them.
Bertrand Fan,
But I am laughing… at you, too.
@Your Mom BluRay
That is exactly what I did and yes it is a nice complement
Afib,
You are so transparent.
You can’t tell the difference between a sub notebook and a notebook.
How the Hell are we going to believe anything else you say?
How’s that blog of yours? Gettin’ any hits yet?
The dweeb ‘ha ha’ (idiotic name) is using a Dull to surf on IE while listening to Boy George on his ‘zune’.
Now THAT’S funny!
Apple should get Rain, the South Korean Pop star to promote iTunes and the iPhone all over Asia.
What’s wrong with Boy George?
Aside from trying to start a Norwegian man collection and reporting an imaginary burglary?
With the imminent widespread international rollout of the iPhone, a further expansion of the iTS into these new markets would make sense.
@ Ampar
Who doesn’t like Norwegian men? They’d look good next to my attic full of milkmen.
Microsoft of course breaks down it’s sales figures methodically. Zune store sales are over teh moon but they won’t announce them, well not yet, Apple has a few years start with theire Itunes, the Redmond Boyz will only speak up when they have a killer blow, as usual. (Caveat: just like Apple Microsoft buries the enormous profit from XBox under their hidden investment programs).
High fives to Dumb x2 for pointing out the MACidiots (well some of them), very funny
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For those who can’t grasp how to bury something under something that is hidden I recommend visiting the Invisible Pink Unicorn (BBHHH).
“They’d look good next to my attic full of milkmen.”
So, THAT’S what happened to Joe Jack Talcum.
I’ve got Reed Flemming up there, too.
I heard the Zune marketplace increased their monthly sales to “12” more people. All of it in part of now being available in Canada. Gates and Ballmer are super enthuzed by the numbers.
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If only we could also rent/buy movies on the Belgium iStore!
Clean up your act, Apple! The growth mentioned in the above article could even be bigger if so many countries didn’t stay excluded from getting movies.
I understand that for such stuff as local shows an other local material, some negotiating is in order, but what about all those movies that are also available in the US? It shouldn’t be too difficult to strike a partial deal that would cover just those royalties!
So, Apple ONLY announces news that benefits the propagandists and market fixers. That is, Apple is reluctant to reveal any information that doesn’t promote the myth of perpetual positive slope.
Pardon my French, but what utter bullshit.
Every quarter, Apple releases its statistics for the desktop, laptop, iPod and iPhone as an abstract for each product line: each product family is reported with overall numbers sold, the revenue for each family and – for the witless who can’t use a calculator (people like you) – the average revenue per sale.
They also compare each stat to the previous quarter and the same quarter in the previous financial year.
Now comes the bit you need to concentrate on…
If you can see that the numbers are going up year-on-year and the average revenue is increasing, it probably means that people are buying more Macs or iPods and it also means that people are buying the more well-specified units.
If you see that the numbers are going down and the average revenue is still increasing, it probably means that the lower end of the product mix isn’t drawing as many punters as before.
And if the numbers are going up and average revenue is decreasing, it means the the lower end is drawing more than the higher end.
Now here’s a really tricky thing for you to try and understand: when Apple isn’t making enough return on a given product to justify its continued production in the portfolio, Apple simply cancels that product.
Please see Xserve RAID as a case in point.
That’s about as much inforrmation as an investor needs to know in order to make an educated assessment as to whether to invest or not: it’s not about details, it’s about trends.
The only people who would benefit from knowing exactly how many MacBooks or MacBook Airs were being sold and the average revenue per sale would be the marketing departments of Apple’s competitors who could then manage the design of products that would be priced to specifically target Apple’s products out of the market.
Presumably, you’d also have Apple publish its list of customer warranty registrations so that Dell and HP could send the customer an invitation to “upgrade” to their products.
Are you clear on that or do I need to send a little diagram to your carer so that they can explain it to you when you’re more lucid?
According to you, Apple should be as dishonest, disreputable, fraudulent, corrupt, unethical, untrustworthy, deceitful, and unscrupulous as others. Well, you must be right! By the way, that was the same point I was making. Thanks for agreeing with me.
Let me explain again: it’s not dishonest to only tell as much of the truth as the investor market needs. It’s called protection of market or trade-sensitive information.
Now let’s see how brave you are.
Set up a website in your own name and specifically accuse Apple’s board personally by name of all the things you wrote in that paragraph.
Then, buy an Apple share which should entitle you to access the company’s shareholder register.
Then send a letter to each shareholder detailing your accusations and referring them to the website.
Or alternatively, you could bring a lawsuit accusing the board of unethical behaviour!
Seriously, we’re all waiting for you to save us from the nefarious activities of Jobs, Schiller, Oppenheimer and Cook not to mention that nasty Mr. Gore. You’d be like Ralph Nader, only Ralph probably doesn’t have to take medication for the same reasons that you do.
Go on, you know you want to…
Surprised by the rental number. I was looking for a rental yesterday and didn’t see a lot there to rent.
If they could just drop the price a little on the purchases or better yet, convert all of the “for purchase” movies to rentals, they would do even better.
Still, with an AppleTV and the ability to rent, it’s not a bad experience.
Comment from: ChrissyOne
I’ve got Reed Flemming up there, too.
That’s got to itch. I think you can get an over the counter cream for that.
50K per day = 20M a year.
Not too shabby
Well said, MCCFR.
Too bad the target is a petulant squabbler with a <u>bizarre</u> agenda.
Here’s a classic Afib/Ha, ha. quote:
“I correct your errors and misunderstandings, provide you instruction and education, and encourage you to better yourself; and you respond with animosity and resentment. You are an ungrateful and spoiled child.”
“Every quarter, Apple releases its statistics for the desktop, laptop, iPod and iPhone as an abstract for each product line: each product family is reported with overall numbers sold, the revenue for each family and – for the witless who can’t use a calculator (people like you) – the average revenue per sale.
They also compare each stat to the previous quarter and the same quarter in the previous financial year.”
It’s been nearly six months now into 2008 and I haven’t located any 2007 sales statistics compared with 2008 sales statistics for Apple. If you had known the links that provided these data (of which you rant lie a simpleton on speed) you would have posted them.
You didn’t provide links to these data before, you haven’t provided links to these data since, and I suspect you cannot provide links to these these data in the near future, proving you’re another propagandized, mindless fanboi talking out of his <strike>Ampar</strike> ass.
How many quarters would you expect Apple to continue to <strike>delay release</strike> <strike>fail to deliver</strike> <strike>manipulate</strike> <strike>falsify</strike> <strike>conceal</strike> ,er, process these data?
I laugh at you and your feeble fellow fanboi fools.
“I laugh at you and your feeble fellow fanboi fools.”
Freak.
Ha, ha…
Simply because you’re too lazy or too stupid to go to http://www.apple.com/investor and then collate the various earnings releases into an Excel spreadsheet doesn’t make the rest of us “feeble fellow fanboi fools”.
My spreadsheet took me about an evening to complete, because I added in some formulae so I could compare financial years, calendar years and last four quarters both at a detail and a cumulative level. I can also analyse rolling 24-month and 36-month figures. And whilst collating it, I was able to verify that Apple hadn’t altered any of its historical data in the light of auditing.
That’s what adults call a useful investment of time, you should give it a try.
Dipshit!
unfortunately mdn can’t get their facts straight. apple anounced on jan 15 that they sold 4 billion songs, not feb. 26. that means that the amount sold only grew from roughly 6 million songs a day to 6,6 million. not much of an acceleration to me.