“From all the media attention being paid to the music download business, you might think that everybody’s downloading legal music. But you’d be wrong,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for Forbes.com. “The number of people legally downloading music amounts to a paltry 2.4 million, according to Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg, though he reckons that figure may grow as large as 28 million by 2008.”
“Although the battle shaping up between the two leaders in the music download market looks rather lopsided, Gartenberg says it’s still too early to declare a winner. Apple Computer clearly has the lead at the moment, while Roxio’s Napster 2.0 is running a distant second,” Hesseldahl writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes Music Store has sold 30 million songs to Napster’s 5 million. Enjoy Forbes’ matchup while Napster lasts. More about Napster’s woes here.
Napster’s woes may be only temporary as Microsoft seems to be getting involved with them. Remember M$ said it was going to get into the music download business. Well it looks like they’ll do that through Napster. Heck, they may even buy the parent Roxio. They have the spare change to do so.
Yeah, and all I can think is, there goes Toast.
The ignorant statment’s by Roxio’s CEO about Apple has pretty much convinced me Toast 6 is my last anyway.
Good riddance Toast. It’s a fine program and I use it for burning data CD’s, but with Toast gone Apple will be forced to enhance the built-in burning capabilities in OS X.
don’t write off every utility for the mac and claim that apple can do a better job. Truthfully, yeah apple can probably make a better product. However, the more utilities apple has to support the less it can concentrate on other more inspiring works. The more apple monopolizes the mac environment, the less developers will want to play in it. If toast goes under, apple is best suited hand picking a replacement or two and helping them startup with pointers to the proper APIs, etc.
I wonder if anyone has a handle on how many illegal music downloads there have been. There are about half as many people connected to Kazaa currently compared to the pre-lawsuit glory days, (3 million) sharing half a billion files of all types.
Is toast the program that burns cds off iTunes for pc? Works great but won’t overburn.
Napster is Toast,
someone had to say it.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Cure Disease with your Mac
“[…] Gartenberg says it’s still too early to declare a winner.”
Obviously, it’s too early to declare a winner. Apple’s “ahead” and that just can’t be. So, therefore, we can’t declare a “winner” until Apple is far behind.
I love the press. They’re so blatantly transparent.
At the end Apple will lose as always. So it’s really too early for any declaration other than this.
“Although the battle shaping up between the two leaders in the music download market looks rather lopsided, Gartenberg says it’s still too early to declare a winner.”
If Roxio was in the lead and Apple was in “distant second,” do you think Hesseldahl would have declaed a winner?
“the two leaders in the music download market”
What? This is like comparing Florida and Greenland as the “two leaders in citrus production”.
I agree with you all, once Apple starts to lose the race all the writers will preach on high “the writting was on the wall, Apple never really had a chance” It is sad really.
But I di not understand Roxio’s position. They have been a long time supporter of the Mac OS and all this negative Napster business. I don’t understand why all the competition is working so hard to make them selves unavailable to mac users? Screw the Mac just cause we have the best service available to us – so we would never look elsewhare?
As for Roxio killing Toast, oh well. In the absense of one, another will rise to the call. Give DiscBlaze a try (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/discblaze.html). Hell of an app for $19. It even erases CD-RW’s.
Chris Pike:
“once Apple starts to lose the race”.
And what am I missing that would suggest that Apple will lose the race? What trends do you see that I am not seeing? Would you please share with the rest of us what we are apparently missing here? What is your definition of losing anyway? How much market share would make Apple a winner or a loser? Can you quantitate your assertions?
Thanks.
Call down for a minute, meat. Let’s give Christopher the chance to change his statement to “… *if* Apple …”.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
It is intutively obvious to the most casual observer why Chris will never become a leader in business: he thinks only in terms of negativity. Avoid such thinking.
As for Roxio killing Toast, oh well. In the absense of one, another will rise to the call. Give DiscBlaze a try (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/discblaze.html). Hell of an app for $19. It even erases CD-RW’s.
Can it over-burn? I’m really annoyed at the lack of good over-burning apps. The one I’ve decided to use for the time being is BurnX Free. It’s free, over-burns (not sure if it’s on purpose though, it just doesn’t warn you if your amount of data is too large) and is very simple. Did I mention it’s free? Sadly it only does Hybrid data CDs and DVDs.
Chris has lost the war before the battle had begun. Sad, sad, sad,