“With more than half a million songs available at the click of a mouse, a music revolution will launch across Europe this week,” Charles Arthur reports for The Independent.
“For the iPod generation, it will be the only way to buy music. The iTunes Music Store — which has already taken America by storm — will be available to British consumers from Tuesday.
The service will be launched by the charismatic chief executive of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, making a rare visit to London. And that will set in train a process that could see high street record shops struggling to compete within a few years. Apple aims to dominate the burgeoning online music business, which analysts expect to be worth billions of pounds in the next few years as high-speed connections become more common in the home and make downloading the multi-megabyte music files quick and painless,” Arthur reports.
“The company is already basking in the success of the American version, launched in April 2003 and which now commands 70 percent of the online market there, having sold one million tracks in its first week, and 85 million so far. The site is available only to customers with a credit card with a US billing address, excluding European buyers,” Arthur reports. “‘That’s only one percent of all legal music sales,’ said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s head of product marketing. ‘But it also represents a technological disruption, to gain one percent in just one year. And, you know, there’s a lot of headroom for us to grow into.'”
Full article here.
Jon E Wunnut, why do you want subscription service? Pay forever to have that music? Miss one payment and say “buh bye” to your tunes. Meantime, pay $.99 for a song and keep it forever. Renting music is not a good idea.
jon one-ball over here too? damn he is getting around today. never mind him – he is just a little short sighted. trapped in his dell and windows world, not able see over his own sorrow of computing experience provided by MS.
as for European music being made available to U.S. listeners, is anyone receiving Apple’s RSS feeds? I’ve seen a tremendous increase in European albums becoming available on iTunes since the e-vite for tomorrow’s event was sent out last week. England, France, Germany, Sweden and even the Czech Republic have been among the labels I’ve seen. Only about 12 hours left.
i have noticed the same thig. there has been a lot of movement lately in that area.
i have a sense a flood is about to be released. there is a lot of positive momentum and hopefully it will carry through into numbers and revenue.
What people have to remember is that what Apple is doing is empowering people (consumers) with another choice from cds etc.
Give the people the right to chose whether they want to buy their music by downloads, cds or whaever.
Give the consumer choice and any company is halfway there to getting customer loyalty.
Microsoft should listen to this – let people choose how they want their music and don’t ram some board member’s or accountant’s view of what people want down their throats.
If Microsoft gave people choice then they would bw 10 times the size they are today – but this will never happen and because of this Microsoft is destined to fail– eventually and Apple will prosper.
Guy from Finland:
“iTMS will support Nokia Telephones and that is HUGE to Apple and Nokia.”
in order for that to work, Nokia will have to license Fairplay from Apple. are you implying that?
isnt this for like 3 countries only? and lots of uk music companies still wont join in?
doesn’t sound like big news but i guess its a good step
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Reggae
Nokia and Apple both uses AAC. Nokia knows that it needs to have DRM system. Nokia is one of the developers of AAC. So licensing is not very big issue here. Nokia already sells huge amount of music every year much more than Apple. Nokia and Apple makes same kind of deal as Apple and HP.
You will see tomorrow.
I am well aware of Nokia contibuting to AAC and about their music selling for the cell phones. But i will be more surprised if Apple finally licenses Fairplay. Indeed that would be HUGE. that would signal that they are willing “to play with others”.
Gotta Go.
Gotta by more AAPL stocks.
This could be another nail in the coffin for WMA.
WMA= Woefully Mediocre Attempt to hijack the download music market. Speaking of hijack, Audio Hijack (and Wire Tap) can be used to convert rented music to owned music without DRM, and there are similar programs for Windows. It would be stupid to offer a music subscription service because of this capability. I would think Apple realises this.
FALCO???!!!
ROCK ME, AMADEUS!
I just wanna download all my techno does anyone know if the opening of the euro store will bring me more techno
Don’t forget Bono bought my NYC house. Ace of Base? Come on…
Please refer to Windows Media Player by the term WiMP in all future usage. Might as well call it what it is. iTunes is the wrapper, iPod is the package, Quicktime is the engine.
All Macs
All HP & Compaq PC’s
Millions of user downloads/installs of Quicktime/iTunes
? Nokia cell phones
Apple is dying/dead, right?
Don’t believe the M$ hype.
Steve Jobs to announce complete Beatles catalogue available on iTMS. A special deal where “The Beatles” get all the money paid for their songs instead of a percentage.
@ Jon E Wunnut
“till no subscription service… Sad, sad, sad.”
Here’s Thurrott’s parrot again. Hi Polly, wanna cracker..? Subscription service, who needs such a thing?
No Nokia deal today. Where did that go? Bad and interesting.