Apple today announced that its iTunes Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Over half of the songs were purchased as albums, dispelling concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales. In addition, over half of the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased at least once, demonstrating the breadth of musical tastes served by Apple’s groundbreaking online store. Apple also reported that over one million copies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and that it has received orders for over 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago, with music lovers snapping up more than 20,000 of them from stores in the U.S. this weekend.
“In less than one week we’ve broken every record and become the largest online music company in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO in the press release. “Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age-you can purchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods.”
“Hitting one million songs in less than a week was totally unexpected,” said Roger Ames, Warner Music Group’s chairman and CEO in the press release. “Apple has shown music fans, artists and the music industry as a whole that there really is a successful and easy way of legally distributing music over the Internet.”
“Our internal measure of success was having the iTunes Music Store sell one million songs in the first month. To do this in one week is an over-the-top success,” said Doug Morris, Universal Music Group’s CEO in the press release. “Apple definitely got it right with the iTunes Music Store.”
Apple also announced that tomorrow, May 6, the iTunes Music Store will be adding over 3,200 new tracks, including major new album releases such as Jack Johnson’s “On and On,” Andrea Bocelli’s “Tosca” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Say You Will,” as well as pre-release tracks from upcoming albums by artists David Sanborn, The RH Factor, John Scofield, Jesse Harris and Lizz Wright. Also to be added tomorrow are additional albums from the Eagles, Michelle Branch’s album “The Spirit Room,” and new Featured Artist pages for Coldplay, including an exclusive track and music video, and Alanis Morissette, with her catalog of music.
The iTunes Music Store features over 200,000 songs from major music companies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, and Warner and lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song. The iTunes Music Store offers groundbreaking personal use rights that allow users to burn songs onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited number of iPods, play songs on up to three Macintoshcomputers, and use songs in other applications on the Mac, including iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD.
Music lovers can easily find the hits they love and discover gems they’ve never heard before by listening to free 30-second high-quality previews of any song in the store, then purchase and download their favorite songs or complete albums in pristine digital quality with just one click. Users can explore music in an entirely new way by easily searching the entire music store to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album, or browse the entire collection of songs by genre, artist and album. The iTunes Music Store is fully integrated into iTunes 4, the fourth major release of Apple’s popular digital music jukebox software, allowing users to purchase, download, organize and listen to their music using just one application.
More info about the iTunes Music Store here.
Great!
Now bring it to Canada!!!
No, to Sweden first.
and the uk!
what really boggles the mind is that the only ones doing the purchasing right now are just the US Macintosh users who are running OSX and the latest versions of Quicktime and iTunes… Just imagine how this is going to blow up when iTunes gets ported to windows and is made available worldwide- this is just the beginning.
Bhutan? *S*
And Holland is waiting…
Get yourself a US-billed credit card and you can download right now!
For int’l customers, you also have to realize that some artists are signed to different labels overseas so there’s that to work out.
And there are taxation issues that we don’t deal with in the US – not just regular taxes but also taxes to help labels/artists recoup “lost” royalties, etc … I have no idea if a downloadable Mp3/ACC is taxed differently but all of that has to be worked out.
But I think it ultimately comes down to financials. In the US, the record label is esssentially grossing about a buck per song from a CD (wholesale about $10-$12 bucks) so it’s not too different of a financial model (and they don’t have to manufacture inventory!) but if you’re looking at the UK or Japan, right now, the wholesale costs of CD’s are definitely more than about a $1 a song so are the labels that greedy or is it taxes? Maybe some of the int’l readers can look into why your CD’s singles are $10-$15 dollars for 3 songs? Greed? Taxes?
Apple, I’m ready to part with my money, so bring it to Finland!
What is going on in redmon right now. The conference doors are shut and bill is slaming doors right now. I would give anything to be a fly on a wall in Microsofts research and Development.
Heh, heh. I just had lunch with an Apple regional manager who’s a good friend but must be unnamed. I complimented him/her on the launch of the music service. The surprising comment – “Wait ’til the videos are available!”
The Land Down Under is impatiently waiting too.