“Piper Jaffray said iTunes from Apple Computer could see a significant boost in digital music downloading. Piper Jaffray… said data from Nielsen Soundscan ‘shows a material uptick in digital downloads’ in each of the last two weeks. The research firm said track volume sales for the week ending Dec. 26, 2004, were 5.046 million, and sales for the week ending Jan. 2, 2005, were 6.690 million,” Forbes.com reports.
“‘Previously, weekly track sales had been bound between 3.0 million and 4.0 million throughout October, November and December,’ Piper Jaffray said. Apple will be ‘the primary beneficiary of growth in the online music industry for a minimum of several quarters,’ the firm said, raising its iTunes December downloads estimate to 68.5 million from 52.1 million. That rate would lead to a potential 474 million downloads in calendar 2005,” Forbes reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: This estimate shows Apple’s iTunes Music Store will record about as many downloads in the last month of 2005 as the store recorded in its entire first full year of operation.
[UPDATED headline and MDN Take to reflect estimate is for Dec 2005 – 2:58PM ET]
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple’s iTunes Music Store downloads pass 200 million songs milestone – December 16, 2004
Apple’s iTunes Music Store passes 150 million songs milestone – October 14, 2004
Apple launches iTunes Affiliate Program; 125 million iTunes purchased to date – September 01, 2004
Apple’s iTunes Music Store sells 100 millionth song – July 12, 2004
Over 85 million songs downloaded from Apple’s iTunes Music Store – June 08, 2004
Apple launches 3G iTunes Music Store, sold over 70 million songs in first year – April 28, 2004
Apple’s iTunes Music Store milestone: over 50 million songs sold – March 15, 2004
Apple’s iTunes Music Store sells ten millionth song; averaging over 500,000 songs per week – September 08, 2003
iTunes Music Store hits five million songs sold; Apple to ship one millionth iPod this week – June 23, 2003
Apple iTunes Music Store sold 3 million songs in first month – May 29, 2003
iTunes Music Store sells over two million songs in first 16 days; over 4,300 songs added yesterday – May 14, 2003
iTunes Music Store sells over one million songs in first week; over 3,200 new tracks coming May 6th – May 05, 2003
Apple’s iTunes Music Store sells estimated 275,000 tracks in first 18 hours – May 01, 2003
Apple launches iTunes Music Store – April 28, 2003
I’m speechless…
Can’t wait for Steve to update us with hard numbers.
Anything to do with iTMS gift tokens being given with iPod Christmas gifts ?
That’s alot of music……
can’t wait to see the slope of that curve!
Oh those Piper Jaffray folks…. Is there anything they don’t know or have an opinion on?
Amazing.
Now watch as the RIAA gets greedy and demands the prices be raised on digital downloads. They could gain so much on keeping the prices low. Digital downloads are a great way for them to promote artists for much cheaper (they don’t need mass media to promote them, they only need to pay iTunes) and a great way to sell works by smaller artists and other less “pop” motivated ones. But they’re going to blow that opportunity for some up-front cash.
So much for a system that’s in it for music and not for money…
See? I *told* ya. Things would really change as soon as iTMS Canada came on line.
iTunes Canada will rull the world.
Ummm, I think they’re predicting for December 2005 guys.
iTunes Canada may rule the world but our spelling is only second rate.
But I am still speedy fast. Now give me my gold medal!!!
The MDN headline is misleading. Piper Jaffrey is predicting (as Zach noted) 68.5 million iTMS song sales for December 2005.
If you read the article, they estimate songs sales to be about 6.7 million per week as of Jan 2, 2005. So by this time next year, Piper Jaffrey is saying that iTMS volumes will nearly triple to about 18 million songs sold per week.
Russell,
The RIAA has absolutely nothing to do with what record labels ask iTunes to charge to their customers for music downloads. The labels and artists themselves determine the price. Misinformation about the RIAA abounds on these boards. It’s a shame people don’t take time out to find out what is what. On the other hand, so many are only interested in stealing music I guess they really don’t care about the truth or facts.
Just recently, I’ve noticed that analysts don’t really appear to have either a) too much imagination or b) sufficient courage to use what imagination they do have.
The performance curve for iTMS looks like this�
Launch: 28/04/03
50 million: 11/03/04 (318 days)
100: 12/07/04 (441 days elapsed, 123 days)
150: 14/10/04 (535 elapsed, 94 days)
200: 16/12/04 (598 elapsed, 63 days)
At the current rate of acceleration, Apple should report that 250 million tracks have been downloaded on or around 03/02/05 (49 days), and with iTMS operations for Japan and Australia rumoured to launch sometime soon, Apple will be shipping 50 million tracks every 14 days from around the middle of August.
The major milestones look something like�
250: 03/02/05 (49 days)
300: 14/03/05 (39 days)
350: 15/04/05 (32 days)
400: 12/05/05 (27 days)
450: 04/06/05 (23 days)
500: 24/06/05 (20 days)
600: 28/07/05
700: 24/08/05
800: 16/09/05
900: 06/10/05
1 billion: 26/10/05
Remember that shipping 50 million tracks is the same as saying 4.2 million albums, and with Apple on track to have around 25 million iPod users by next September, the prediction is that 20% of iPod customers will engage in downloading an album every two weeks which isn’t excessive behaviour for the target market.
It’s all the NHL Canadian players downloading now that they have nothing to do.
I can’t believe you people! Have you fallen under the spell of the liberal media? Don’t you know that Apple is bankrupt and going out of business? God above has ordained that Microsoft shall rule the world! There is no hope…we need to quit dreaming, recognize truth, and get back to hunching over and crying into our beers! Real Media deserves this success more than Apple does!
(For the humor impaired, this post is dripping with sarcasm. If you fell for it, don’t feel bad, because I, in my great love for all things Apple and Mac, have fallen for such things before and missed the poster’s intent.)
Vive le Mac! Vive l’Apple!
But seriously, folks…
It seems like Apple news coverage runs hot and cold. It’s been cold for a number of years, now it’s getting as how for Joe Q. Public as we’ve thought it was all along.
Which leads to my concern. If you take both the worst of the business and the best of the consumer estimates, Mac is somewhere between 1%-15% of the OS market…
Apple has always had trouble meeting demand, even for us…what happens now if twice as many people join the party? Do we even have a hope of keeping up with it.
I’d be willing to bet that a significant number of purchases (esp. at Apple Stores) are impulse buys. People are definitely intrigued, but they are so impressed when then see Apple/Mac stuff in person at the store, I think that credit cards will spontaneously begin leaping out of wallets. Let’s be sure that we can accomodate them…
Russel
Now watch as the RIAA gets greedy and demands the prices be raised on digital downloads. They could gain so much on keeping the prices low. Digital downloads are a great way for them to promote artists for much cheaper (they don’t need mass media to promote them, they only need to pay iTunes) and a great way to sell works by smaller artists and other less “pop” motivated ones. But they’re going to blow that opportunity for some up-front cash.
Nope.
Apple does not offer “pay per ad” on iTunes. All the banners and promotions are selected by Apple employees. Apple is free to promote talented indy acts along with Eminem and Usher. The labels just supply the encoded music, Apple does the rest.
As far for your comment on “blowing opportunity” that may come eventually, but Apple has got contracts locked in for at least a few more years. A lot can change between then and now. We’ll see. Don’t expect any loyalty from the industry towards Apple who saved their ass, just expect them to look after their own self interest at the time, but don’t expect any different from Apple either.
Love it. As Apple sells music like mad, all of the Windows world COMBINED can’t even come close – it’s simply too late! The comsumers are making their voices heard as they choose Apple. Microsoft is so screwed. They snooze, they lose. Windows Media format? Never heard of it. Plays for sure? On my iPod? I didn’t think so.