“The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store will fall short of its original target of selling 100 million songs by the end of April. Apple has sold 50 million songs since last April, and CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview on Monday that the company may sell 70 million to 75 million by the end of April 2004. The songs sold so far do not include those claimed as part of a promotion with Pepsi, which teamed up with Apple last months to give away 100 million free songs. Apple makes its profits more from sales of its iPod music players than from the songs themselves, so missing the 100 million target is unlikely to hurt the company’s profits, the paper said,” ElectricNews.net reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While it may be unfashionable lately, we’ll continue to wait until April 28, 2004 to report on the actual first year tally. Unfortunately, it seems Apple is now in danger of taking a wildly successful 70-75 million (if Jobs’ projections hold) first year sales total and making it look like a failure due to Jobs’ artificial “100 million goal.” Note to Steve: don’t set goals in public if you aren’t damn sure that you can hit them. You’ll just give your foes ammunition otherwise; even if the ammo you’re providing are duds, they can still wound. As for reports yesterday that stated “Apple missed their goal,” you cannot miss a goal if the deadline has not yet arrived. Expect to see plenty of similar reports today and in the coming weeks – all written by time-travelers, we’re sure. Of course, if Apple does miss their goal on April 28th, we will report it dutifully.
iTunes and/or Apple Computer fans: if you want an album or two (or ten), now’s the time to go buy it via Apple’s iTunes Music Store. We call it the “Steve Jobs ‘Foot in Mouth’ Prevention Promotion.”
Related MacDailyNews article:
CNET incorrectly reports Apple missed iTunes 100 million song goal – March 15, 2004
Jobs is predicting 70-75mil before the Pepsi tunes are counted. Once again, this master of promotion is setting up the stage where folks are going to be ready to claim failure and he will pull a 30-40mil Pepsi promotion sales figure out of his turtleneck sleeve and announce they’ve surpassed the goal.
Like MDN said, let’s wait until 4.28…
Very good “take”, MDN.
Hey MDN, please fix the “full article” link.
hydnjo,
The link works fine. It’s in the second to last paragraph of the article.
Man, the media is really getting *desparate* to find a reason to trash Apple. Oooo! They FAILED to move 100 Million songs by April 28th! Oooo! You heard it here first! Oooo!
Can these same time travellers provide me with BuyMusic and Napsters numbers for the year? I’ll bet there just great! Because they use WMA! It’s a “standard”! Not a “closed format”!
Hey, lookit me! I’m a journalist!
Something doesn’t add up. Did Jobs say 70-75 million including the Pepsi giveaway, or not including it?
In the other thread, it was calculated that Apple would sell 65 million (using the daily sales numbers Apple released), and the giveaway would be added to that. Am I to believe that Pepsi will only manage to distribution 0.001% of the winning bottlecaps by the end of April?
If anyone gets WSJ, please report what Jobs really said. I think the 75 million number might be regular iTMS sales, which would make the 100 million number still plausible.
Apple is doomed!
C-Net headline: “Apple bankrupt soon due to lackluster music sales and a torrent of exciting Microsoft innovations; Mac users to face financial ruin and degenerative diseases”
While Steve has been known to miss on a thing or two once in awhile, I think he’s setting us all up bigtime. My guess is the number announced on April 29 will be around 105 to 110 million when including the Pepsi redemptions. Their have been plenty of people around the office here in Chicago bragging about having redeemed dozens of winning codes.
here’s something from the bbc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3514178.stm
Well, hasn’t Pepsi already bought the 100 million songs? So tack 100 million onto the current total. Right?
I inderstood that Stev Jobs ment 100 milj for the year 2004…
“The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store will fall short of its original target of selling 100 million songs by the end of April.”
… bong! the original target, as quoted elsewhere in mdn, set the target as 100 million songs inlcuding the pepsi promotion – the 70-75 million is extrapolated from the 50 million plus the 2.5 million a week… so only 25% uptake of the (free, gratis and for nothing) pepsi promotion is required for apple to reach its target…
oh, and steve has admitted nothing about falling short… only projected sales figures..
the end
Spiff,
Pepsi hasn’t bought the 100 million songs. They anticipated only about a 1/3 of them actually being bought, so they really think they will only spend about $33 million or so. Plus I’m sure they are getting a discount on the price per song.
A global iTMS would surpass Steve’s PR goal with complete ease…
—
http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
I don’t think it matters either way. 100 million… 50 million… 75 million… I mean really, people can talk all they want about the failure of missing the 100 million target but in the end Apple is still successful… really successful.. the people that matter to Apple know this and that’s all that matters…
Hey MDN! I am a Apple Fan and of course I am a iPod lover…and I would love to support your “Steve Jobs ‘Foot in Mouth’ Prevention Promotion.”…but as I am living in Germany and Apple is not able to bring iTMS to Europe…I can’t help!
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So MacDailyNews gets it wrong! And then has the audacity to criticize CNET, The Mac Observer and others for reporting it wrong based on a quote that was actually misquoted and taken out of context by MDN!
You don’t even have the professionalism of retracting your story and setting the record straight! After so much criticism by your readers who followed you over the cliff you don’t even feel you should explain yourself? Your story today acts like you forgot what happened less than 24 hours ago.
One news organization stood by their story and didn’t retract until the facts were checked directly with Apple and that Was MacObserver.com.
Let’s get this on the record so we know who really got it wrong…Jobs told the WSJ…””We’re not going to make that number,” he said in an interview. “At the rate we’re at right now, we’ll probably have sold 70 million to 75 million songs” by the end of April.”
So were is YOUR retraction?!
Oh oh, looks like one of the editors from TMO made it here, with his panties in a bunch.
Unless Steve has a time machine too, I think we should ALL wait until the end of April and see what happens.
atomic mac,
Same here. I too live in an iTunes deprived land and can’t help.
They will announce 175 million at the end of April.
Someone ask:
::In the other thread, it was calculated that Apple would sell 65 million (using the daily sales numbers Apple released), and the giveaway would be added to that. Am I to believe that Pepsi will only manage to distribution 0.001% of the winning bottlecaps by the end of April?::
You are partly correct.
the forula used yesterday was:
50m sold to date + (2.5m x 6.5 weeks) = 66.25m
But, what was left out that equation is that iTMS sales are not simply holding (much less slowing as originally predicted), but increasing. Each week they sell more than the last. I forget the rate of growth, but it certainly explains why Steve expects sales � withouth Pepsi � to be in the 70m to 75m range.
So you get something that looks more like this:
50m sold to date + 2.6 + 2.8+ 2.9 + 3.0 + 3.2 + 3.5 + 2.0 = 70m
The down side is:
1) I do not know if sales are growing that fast. Perhaps someone with more time on their hands can search for old sales figures and figure out sales growth rate?
2) I have read so many differing reports on what the expected redemtion rate is for Pepsi. I have seen everything from expectations of 10 to 20% to expectations of 30 to 40%. Apple needs 30% to get 100m or get close enough that it will not look they are slipping to the lemmings of the world.
On the up side, even if Apple does not make 100m by April 28th, even with Pepsi, that will be at or over the point where they can sell over 130m songs a year, selling like 10x the volume their closest competition is selling (and that is only if Napster is counting SALES and not just DOWNLOADS they stream). So, even if they “lose” they win BIG!
Will they make it? I dunno, I excpet anything between 80m (including Pepsi) to 100m+.
Will it really matter? Like I said above, not really.
MacObserver has proven on their pages and above to be unprofessional, not to mention unable to read. Read the MDN take. It explains their position perfectly. MacObserver should get back in their time machine, go 10,000 years into the future, get out of the machine and then blow it up. Then we won’t have to listen to you idiots.
—–..but as I am living in Germany and Apple is not able to bring iTMS to Europe…I can’t help!
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it is not Apple’s fault that songs are not sold in Germany, unfortunately your government’s idiotic laws on the matter are at fault, tell your governments that socialism only works on social agendas, not selling products….
correct your local and EU government, and you’ll get to have products……. refurbish your government, and you’ll not only get product, you’ll get it cheaper too….
france actually not only makes it harder to buy an ipod, they are trying to even make it impossible…. simply because of ridiculous socialistic laws applied to technology products….
even alas, Spain shows that people are moved only by fear, greed, and ignorance….. …. Spain gets to watch it’s economy destroyed because of fear……
too bad really for semi socialists states… they get the worst of all worlds………. fear only breads more acts that provoke fear…..
PS. it appears the BBC retracted their original article and corrected it on the itunes 50 million number, which is good…
joe
Truth: MDN never said Apple WOULD make the goal. They’ve been very clear about that. What they said was:
1. They haven’t missed the goal YET because April hasn’t ended. That’s pure fact.
2. The Pepsi promo was part of that goal.
Some news outlets reported that Apple “fell far short” of a goal that hasn’t happened yet. They didn’t say Apple WILL fall short. It was also reported that Apple expected to sell 100 million PLUS the Pepsi promo, which is false and MDN had the quotes to prove it.
And not only did Steve’s current quote come AFTER MDN’s accurate report (the C-Net headline) earlier, but MDN passed this latest quote along with its own headline, trying to hide nothing.
What exactly should MDN retract? And why are people upset about this? I genuinely don’t get it. C-Net retracted some stuff and they should have! Unlike MDN, they had the facts wrong.
As an MDN reader, please explain why I should be upset
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Kenny:
.001%? Where do you get that number?
Jobs predicts up to 75 million songs sold, presumably including the Pepsi promo. Quick math shows iTMS should sell a total of 65 million without the promo:
75mil – 65mil = 10 mil.
100mil / 10mil = 10%
10% is a bit different than .001%