“Apple undershot its first-year iTunes Music Store download target by 30 million songs, the company admitted today, 12 months after the digital music business was launched. CEO Steve Jobs had forecast sales of 100 million songs, but in the end ITMS users acquired only 70 million – still sufficient to put the store at the top of the download service chart,” Tony Smith writes for The Register.
“Indeed, Apple today claimed a 70 per cent market share ‘for singles and albums,’ based on its own calculations. Customers are buying 2.7 million songs a week from the store – if they continue to do so, Apple will sell 140 million songs next year. Some 700,000 songs are now available for download. ‘iTunes has exceeded our wildest expectations during its first year,’ Jobs said in statement, the infamous ‘reality distortion field’ kicking in at this point, presumably,” Smith writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has stupidly put itself in the position of taking a wildly successful 70 million songs sold in its first year 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. For reference, Napster 2.0 sold five million songs in its first four months of operation or less than Apple currently sells every 12 days.
The Register is little too fast to jump in to conclusions.
We haven’t heard what Steve has to say.
Question is if the Pepsi promotion is included or not.
I mean if it is 70 000 000 plus 100 000 000 then it makes 170 000 000 and that is unbelievable. We have to remember that the Pepsi promo is still going on.
I believe the original forecast (a year ago) was for 1 million songs. That was exceeded 70 times over. The 100 million song forecast came months later, long after the original goal had been obliterated.
If my memory is correct, wasn’t the “100 million” goal set AFTER previous goal(s) had been BLOWN AWAY? Can someone confirm this?
Finland is right re: the Pepsi promo. One-third of my iTMS purchases were from the Pepsi promo. Do they count? svenrox.com claims 200 Pepsi tunes (far more than me), do they count? The reality distortion field isn’t necessary here, though, because the iTMS has done far better than expected (see my first post).
Kent, the 100 million goal came with the release of iTMS for Windows in September (or thereabouts).
‘reality distortion field’, the answer to FUD?
My memory may fail me here, but Jobs set a goal of 100 mio downloads per year when he introduced iTMS for Windows in November 03. So in my opinion you have to start the count in November and wait another 7 months.
The first seven months, iTMS was not available for at least half its current users.
Sorry, it was September 03. So, another 4-5 months to go.
Thank you, MDN, for actually criticizing Apple when they take a mis-step. You guys have been in danger of becoming the anti-Thurott, which is pretty much just as bad as the actual Thurott.
Why do you guys keep apologizing and trying to cook the numbers:
“We’re not going to make that number,” CEO Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal this week. “At the rate we’re at right now we’ll probably have sold 70-75 million songs by the end of April.”
End of story. He opened his mouth and stuck in his foot. Everyone does it sometimes. Stop brownnosing a rich businessman…….they can’t feel it anyway.
MDN has always ripped Apple a new one when they deserved it. For example:
Apple’s dirty little secret: sluggish Mac OS X still annoyingly slow
I recall from wacthing the Apple press release for ITMS for windows that Jobs said that the 100 M goal would INCLUDE the Pepsi Promotion. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like:
Our goal is for 100 million downloads in one year. If we can’t do it with AOL and Windows, we will give them away.
whereupon he introduces the planned Pepsi giveaway.
I don’t know if he was being tounge and cheek about that figure, But I doo seem to recall him saying something like that. can anyone who has the time verify this? The QT stream might still be available on the Apple site. Sorry, I just don’t have the time.
Read the Jobs quotes here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/17/jobs_apple_will_not_meet/
“We think we’ve got a really good shot at selling 100 million legal downloads the first year… by April 28th, 2004,” said Jobs
And wipe your noses
The ‘100 million’ goal was announced at the launch of iTunes for Windows (16/10/03) and Pepsi were a major part of that goal.
However, I suspect that Steve didn’t think out at that point that a) the promotion wouldn’t be closed by today so b) he couldn’t report on the figures because c) it’s Pepsi’s promotion and it’s market sensitive.
Still, the last 20 million downloads happened in 47 days – 360,000/day or 2.5 million a week. All 70 million happened at an average of over 190,000/day. The first 50 million took 318 days at a rate of over 157,000 a day so the adoption of iTMS has increased by over 25% in the last 47 days and has nearly doubled since 12/12/03 when the rate was over 109,000/day.
I swear to God that if I ever meet anyone who claims to be a technology journalist, I will beat him/her to death with my cricket bat. Admittedly, I’ll have to go and buy a cricket bat first, but it’s a sacrifice worth making.
hey don’t you think that apple is doing preatty well in the windows market with iTunes and iPod, since most of the windows people dont like apple.
absofuckinlutely artiom, that is the real news. I use itunes and it gives a glimmer of the nice and easy style of osX on a windows machine. For instance the cd burner…..just burns the damn cd without a hundred preferences having to be selected. Unfortunately, it won’t over burn because it IS so darn simple so I never use it. But for Joe sixpack, it is probably an awakening. Too bad the mac product line is so poorly presented.
Yes… “We think we’ve got a really good shot” does not mean “We will sell 100 million songs by April 28th”. That’s the whole point, which is that The Register and many others are taking something Mr. Jobs said offhandedly and blowing it up. If it was Napster of one of the others the headline would be much more positive like “BuyMusic blows away expectations and actually stays in business!”.
BTW, I don’t go to The Register anymore, way too much anti-Apple stuff there no matter what Apple does.
Jonahan (Jonathan?), to be fair, I am pretty sure Steve would have reminded us of the “prediction” had they made it.
Pretty depressing to hear so many smart people waxing Clintonian about this.
If Apple first projected 1 Million downloads and then projected 100 Million downloads – off the mark in a good way and then off the mark in a bad way – does this not show how lousy Apple is at making projections? Each case is probably a safe, low estimate.
Why are they so wildly off?
Predicting the future is one thing, but this is a completely different case… inability to produce remotely accurate projections.
If Apple first projected 1 Million downloads and then projected 100 Million downloads – off the mark in a good way and then off the mark in a bad way – does this not show how lousy Apple is at making projections? Each case is probably a safe, low estimate.
Why are they so wildly off?
Predicting the future is one thing, but this is a completely different case… inability to produce remotely accurate projections.
Who cares. 70 Million is approximately 60 Million more than any of their competitors have sold and they have a 70% market share. Plus as has been mentioned, let’s wait until Steve’s conference call this morning to see if the Pepsi promo numbers are included in the 70 Million figure. I doubt they are and Steve’s 100 Million goal INCLUDED the Pepsi redemptions.
I know that between my girlfriend and I, we redeemed a little over 100 winning Pepsi caps. I also doubt those are counted in the 70 million total since you still have until Friday to redeem them. Once the final Pepsi numbers come in, they’ll be awfully close to 100 million. None of their competition has even reached 10 million yet so for the Register to gloat about this is quite comical.
Mac/PCguy…It’s so easy that Microsoft has always known and predicted exactly when Longhorn will be released. Talk about low performance!
Rob, if you think “selling” means “giving away” then you are right.
check out this site, you may have heard of it:
http://www.apple.com/
“1 year. Seventy million songs.”