“Apple Computer said Monday that it has sold 50 million songs from its iTunes Music Store — far below its goal, which was to sell 100 million songs by April,” Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com in the article entitled, ‘Apple falls far short of iTunes goal.’ “Apple says the 50 million figure excludes the number of unspecified songs downloaded through a Pepsi giveaway, which itself was designed to account for 100 million songs.”
“Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced the goal of 100 million songs in October, when the company expanded the iTunes Music Store to work with Windows-based computers. Apple reiterated the goal in December when it announced that it had sold 25 million songs up to that point,” Fried writes.
“Although Apple did not reach the goal it set for itself in October, it did note that iTunes users are now downloading 2.5 million songs per week, which means the company is now selling songs at a rate of 130 million songs per year,” Fried writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This would all be very interesting, if it were true. However, unlike CNET, we are forced to let the facts get in the way. Fact number one is that until April 28, 2004, the one year anniversary of iTunes and the date Steve Jobs’ set for the 100 million song goal, Apple has not failed to hit its target. Fact number two, and this is the big one, is that Jobs plans to count the Pepsi redemptions toward the 100 million songs sold – after all they are actually songs sold. The songs redeemed are paid for by Pepsi.
Steve Jobs specifically stated, in explaining how Apple would hit the 100 million songs sold mark, “What are we going to do [to sell 100 million songs in a year]? We’re going to give away a hundred million songs. You heard me right. We are so proud to be partnering with Pepsi on this… So, a hundred million songs by April 28, 2004 – this is our goal – we’re going to Windows [with an iTunes version], partner with AOL, …and we’re going to give away 100 million songs with Pepsi… So, we think we’ve got a really good shot at selling 100 million legal downloads the first year.” See it for yourself during Jobs’ presentation from the Moscone Center in San Francisco during Apple’s “iTunes for Windows Introduction” on October 16, 2003 here. Jobs’ remarks on this 100 million song goal begin at 43:30 into the presentation.
Clearly, Jobs intends to count the Pepsi redemptions. These redemptions are not included in today’s announcement of over 50 million songs sold. And it is not yet April 28, 2004. Fried is wrong to pretend that Apple has not hit its goal. No one can know until April 28, 2004 and all of the songs sold are counted.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Apple’s iTunes Music Store milestone: over 50 million songs sold – March 15, 2004
Steve Jobs says Apple to sell 70-75 million songs by end of April – March 16, 2004
This is their update?!
<update Apple Computer said Monday that it has sold 50 million songs through its iTunes Music Store–a substantial number but far below its goal of selling 100 million songs by April.>
Hardly correcting their factual errors! When will media be accountable for facts? Sad.
hahah
IAN Fried seems to have trouble spelling his name properly.
Pepsi isn’t making it worth our while here in the Washington DC area. A single bottle of Diet Pepsi costs $1.25. For 99 cents I can just download the same song off the store, and not get addicted to caffein or sugar water. By the time I actually win one song, I would have spent more than 4 times as much as the song is worth. And that’s if I don’t cheat by tilting the bottle. Tried that trick it doesn’t work on all bottles either.
yeah, it only makes sense to buy pepsi and stop spending your money (if you do spend it) on whatever drink you normally consume, which is what i did. So I do save because i get free songs but spend the same amount of money i would normally spend on my usual beverage of choice.
MDN! Let’s put out a call for every iPod owner or iTunes user to go out an buy an album before April 28th! No doubt that with the Pepsi promotion, Apple will hit its mark of 100 million, but let’s remove all doubt for the perpetual naysayers of the world!
If iTMS is selling songs at the rate of 2.5M per week then they will reach 65M or more by the April 28th “deadline.” So the Pepsi promotion would only have to contribute 35M, or roughly one-third their planned total.
It amazes me how some people will jump on you for falling a little short of a lofty goal, even though you have overachieved, while lauding another for outperforming a ridiculously low goal (mycokemusic’s 10,000 songs per week in Europe).
I really hope Apple hits that 100 million song download mark at the end of April so they guys can eat their words. And I think we should all make sure they post a public retraction to this FUD. I think I’m going to buy some music tonight.
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Oh, and don’t forget that you have to redeem your Pepsi/iTunes songs by April 30 so there will be a huge rush in that last week to get songs in. 100 million will be cake.
What about the person who had spent over $29,000 on iTunes songs in its first six months. How much are they up to now? Does Napster or BuyMusic have anyone spending that kind of change on their sites?
“MDN! Let’s put out a call for every iPod owner or iTunes user to go out an buy an album before April 28th! No doubt that with the Pepsi promotion, Apple will hit its mark of 100 million”
Please go to your local Target store and purchase a $15 gift card and then use the credit to purchase an album and five songs. This will send the message to Target to really stick with Apple.
CNET is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: CNET). I’m going to check my mutual funds to see if any have CNET stock. If they do, I’m going to email the managers telling them I will pull out of the funds if they continue to keep CNET. If they don’t have CNET – I will warn them not to purchase CNET.
I’m also going to email NASDAQ directly. We have a case of one company on the exchange making false claims about another firm on the same exchange. Furthermore, they are helping Roxio – also on the NASDAQ. Not exactly impartial journalism.
allgood2: You’re right, I forgot to include the weekly rate. Apple might make it after all.
Safari Crashes: I complained of the same thing last week. After I reset Safari, the crashes stopped. Perhaps it has something to do with the CSS file not being available from ~ desktop. Look at the error messages in Window>>Activity, and then select Safari>>Reset Safarii…
Also, the Remember me box does nothing. Since that last MDN server crash, things just haven’t been the same.
We believe we’ve fixed that coding error now.
Thanks, KennyLucius.
Working on the “Remember me” issue now…
Shouldn’t that headline read:
“c|net Falls Far Short of Actual Journalism”?
It’s starting to get boring.
(Yes, OK, c|net…we get it…you’re a M$ lapdog…shaddap already….)
Journalism and media is no longer about facts it is about control. The internet is a bunch of lies. Face it people if you want to go get facts, go to reviewed scientific journals at an established university. It has been that way for years.
Call me old, but I believe a lot of journalistic rules went out the door with the advent of online “news”. Anyone with a net connection can create a news site. They usually hire their friends or, in the case of tech news sites, they hire a techie, rather than anyone with journalistic training. This means no real research, no rules against bias, no rules against writing pro your advertisers and con your advertisers’ competitors.
Further, no one writes retractions anymore. They either quietly change their story or they simply remove it.
Please don’t flame me for this political point, but a good example of this is Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report. This guy is the furthest thing from a journalist. He wrote a big article about how John Kerry was having an affair with a journalist, and how “unnamed sources” heard Wesley Clark say that Kerry would go down for this. He never provided any facts, and when it was shown to be a false story, he never printed a retraction. He simply said he was standing by his story. So, anyone that read (and believed) his crap had no reason to believe it wasn’t true. Drudge accomplished what he set out to do, which was to put doubt into people’s mind about John Kerry. Whether you are Republican or Democrat, you have to see how bad that is. C/NET is no better…
I emailed the editor of a news site (http://www.velozie.com) about how false this story is. He pulled all links to his reposting of CNET’s story. For those that may still find the article via google he added an editorial comment based on my email – saying the story was false and not based on fact. Adding that they may indeed reach their goal.
One small victory!
Ina Fried: “guys – Apple have just made a press release for iTMS. But look – they fell short. Ha! They’ve only downloaded 50million songs! Can I write an article about that?”
cnet big boss: “sure Ina. Just remember its Apple, so we need to make it as factless and sloppy as possible. And dont forget to slander them, but nicely, in the the public eye.”
Ina Fried: “No problem. I thought I could also run a bullshit heading too, to help draw people to the article!”
cnet big boss: “Gold Star for you, Ina!”
Once again, its tall poppy syndrome time at cnet.
Add The Mac Observer, ZDnet, the BBC and Bloomberg News to the growing list of stories claiming Apple missed the mark.
Idgits!
joey: The bloomberg article currently doesn’t mention the Pepsi promotion or missing the target. I was unable to find a ZDnet article. The MacObserver article has an honest headline, but reports that Principal Analyst with Forrester Research “Mr. Bernoff said Apple’s failure to meet its own anniversary goal should not be construed as a sign there are troubles for Apple or the download music industry.” I don’t think quoting an analyst is the same as printing lies, especially since their headline is okay.
joey: Oops. It’s a ZDnet UK article. I looked in the wrong place.
For those of you who aren’t Google whiz-kids (myself included) here is a link to Google’s news links on this issue.
BBC got it too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3514178.stm
Must be some truth in it
Two MSNBC articles here and here, are negative but factual. No fault there, but I wonder if they were factual earlier today. I think both articles have been updated/changed.
Also, the CNET article has been updated to read “falling short” instead of “falls short”. It is also very similar to one of the MSNBC articles. I wonder how often that happens?
Hehehe… Now the comments section for the article doesn’t work. It brings up something from downtime.net.co.uk, saying,
“You have been redirected to this page during a temporary period of planned downtime. We apologise for any inconvenience this work may have caused you. ZDNet UK should be available shortly and we encourage you to visit us again soon.
-The ZDNet UK Team”
Heck, I tried reloading it just now, and it brings up the same downtime page instead of the article. Let’s see what it says before the end of the evening.. lol