Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 50 million songs from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, not including songs redeemed from the currently-running Pepsi iTunes promotion. The 50 millionth song, purchased last Thursday afternoon, was “The Path of Thorns” by Sarah McLachlan. iTunes users are now downloading 2.5 million songs per week, which is an annual run rate of 130 million songs per year.
“Crossing 50 million songs is a major milestone for iTunes and the emerging digital music era,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO in the press release. “With over 50 million songs already downloaded and an additional 2.5 million songs being downloaded every week, it’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.”
Apple is the only company to offer a complete solution for buying, managing and listening to digital music anywhere with the unique combination of the iTunes digital music jukebox software, the pioneering iTunes Music Store and the market-leading iPod and iPod mini digital music players. All work seamlessly together to make the new digital music era accessible to everyone.
The iTunes Music Store offers Windows and Mac users the industry’s largest online music catalog of over 500,000 songs, industry-leading personal use rights and uniform 99 cents-per-song pricing. With exclusive tracks from more than 150 artists, the iTunes Music Store offers music from all five major music companies and over 300 independent music labels. Plus more than 5,000 audiobooks, online gift certificates, Apple’s patent-pending “Allowance” feature which lets parents automatically deposit funds into their kids’ iTunes Music Store account every month, Celebrity Playlists, iTunes Essentials and Billboard Charts.
More info about Apple’s iTunes Music Store here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Roxio raises revenue guidance for Napster; projects $5.5 million for fiscal third quarter – March 15, 2004
No quote from Gorog?
50 million songs, and that doesn’t include the Pepsi promotion?
And Napster’s most recent reported downloads were 5 million songs and that’s the No. 2 online distributor?
iTunes sells 2.5 million a week?!
That’s very good news, indeed!
A quote from Chris Gorog? How about this from November 8, 2003: “We expect as soon as we get the word out to consumers that Napster is back, it will significantly impact our growth,” Gorog said in an exclusive interview with TechNewsWorld. “We would also expect to be taking away market share from Apple on a weekly basis.”
hahahahahahaha
Now maybe the smack-talkers will rethink their position regarding iTMS / iPod’s “proprietary, closed AAC format.
Can you imagine how much more entrenched iTMS will be once it hits Japan, Canada, and the UK? Damn! These other services really won’t have a chance, I’m afraid.
> once it hits Japan, Canada, and the UK
Make that the rest of the world!
Go Apple, it’s your birthday. We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday.
Paul Thurrot I hope when you read this article it burns you ass as much as your articles does to the mac community.
Stick WMA up your ass where it belongs!
Let the FUD begin: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5173115.html?tag=nefd_top
Leave it to cnet to put a negative spin on this.
Weren’t they predicting 100 millions songs by now or something like that?
50,000,000 and not 100,000,000?
Oh, geezz, I guess Apple sucks because it is not able to accurately predict their growth in a completely new market. It’s not like predicting egg sales in Iowa.
Any other music or computer company would have INCLUDED the Pepsi promotion numbers. I think Apple’s integrity was enhanced by not doing so.
Congratulations to the Apple staff for their success!!
It took the whole company to produce a seamless user experience from download to computer to player.
At 2,500,000 per week, BIlly G. and his minions must be fuming with anger and jealousy. Cool! Try to copy THAT Billy!!
Folks, this is just catching on in the US. Just wait till it hits the rest of the world. If Apple could get a $199 iPod mini distributed as needed to the world along with ITMS International, then we would read about a billion songs downloaded. Think of those who wanted a mini but bought something else instead because it wasn’t available at the moment. Makes me cringe!
Gorog: “But, but, but we h-h-have our 5 millionth download. iTunes is hard to use. And, and, we use superior WMA. This is not fair. Whaaaa!!”
*hangs his head in shame*
A little perspective for CNET:
When Jobs pitched the idea to the recording studio bosses, they said they would be happy if iTMS can sell one million songs in the first year. Jobs came back to them in six weeks with their one millionth download. Less than a year latter, iTMS sells fifty million songs. In case CNET is mathematically challenged, that is fifty times the original estimate. And the tally does not include Pepsi promo. So what if they fall a bit short of the one hundred million downloads? That does not make iTMS a failure.
This is a bunch of bunk. When Jobs quoted the 100 million figure he meant *including* the Pepsi promotion. And didn’t he say it was by the end of the year that they wanted to reach that number? (I forget if it was the end of this year or the end of the first year of iTMS operations.) Bah.
Jobs said 100 million by April. April isn’t over yet, but I doubt that they have redeemed another 50 million bottlecaps. Pepsi kinda screwed up that promotion. It’s not Apple’s fault, but lets lay some blame there: Jobs was too optimistic. Big deal. It was a pep rally, after all
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CNET focused on the negative, but at least they were factual. They didn’t deny that iTMS is number one by a huge margin.
If you assume that Track 50M was sold right at the end of Thursday, Apple still have [B]47[/B] days to reach the 100M total.
If iPod mini sales stimulate 10% growth in standard downloads (to around 393K/day), Apple wll achieve 68.5M sales by April 28.
The PepsiCo promotion then needs to generate 32.5 million downloads by the end of April to reach 100 million: put another way, Pepsi drinkers need to redeem nearly 380,000 downloads/day (backdated since February 2).
If you further assume that there are 1M iPod users in the USA who might be on the lookout for winning caps, they each have to find/buy a winning cap every [B]3[/B] days or so. So if you buy a bottle of Pepsi every day, you need a 1 in 3 chance, which is exactly what you’ve got (300 million bottles, 100 million winners).
I’m willing to lay money that Apple will only miss its target by around 2.5% – 5% if it misses at all, which I doubt. PepsiCo are not as stupid as some contributors seem to think; so I suspect the caps are out there, it’s just you have to be real enthusiastic to get to them quickly.
Obviously, my hasty calculations were off. Apple achieving the goal is much more likely than I thought. Thanks for setting me straight.
Nobody:
Apple sold one million songs in the first week of operation.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-999701.html
I think by the sixth week, they were closing in on 5 million.