“Despite the success of Apple iTunes, few people stock their iPod with tracks from the online store, reports a study,” BBC News reports.
“The Jupiter Research report says that, on average, only 20 of the tracks on an iPod will be from the iTunes shop,” BBC News reports. “Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.”
“On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites,” BBC News reports.
Full article here.
The results echos similar studies in the past. It’s common sense: most people have purchased and built CD libraries already, why would they buy iTunes Tracks when they already have them? We expect iTunes Store purchases to increase as iPod owers shop via iTunes Store for new music and decrease buying music the old way, on CD. Simple math: divide 1.5 billion iTunes Store tracks sold to date by 60 million iPods and you get 25 tracks per iPod. We did that without conducting a study.
By the way, the music ripped from CDs someone already owned is not “free.” They’ve already paid for the music when they purchased the CD.
JupiterResearch’s Mark Mulligan comments on the report in his blog and mentions, “iPod owners actually demonstrate slightly more positive trends than other MP3 player owners, demonstrating the strength of the iPod/ITMS proposition, but only slightly.”
In January 2006, XTN Data reported that iPod owners are “substantially less likely to download using filesharing software with only 7% of iPod people downloading illegally compared to 25% on average. And they’re more likely to be buying CDs with your everyday iPodder buying 2.3 albums a month compared to the average of 1.8.” XTN Data surveyed over 1,000 UK and US music buyers to arrive at the data. XTN Data also found that 50% of iPod owners regularly download music from Apple iTunes Music Store.
Related articles:
Real CEO Glaser calls Apple iPod owners thieves – May 11, 2006
Study shows iPod owners significantly less likely to steal music than the average person – January 13, 2006
Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004
The iTunes Music Store has sold more than 1.5 billion tracks so far. If iPod owners aren’t buying all this music, then WHO IS?
Duh!?!?
I dumped all my CD’s to iPod.
“The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen'”
–Rob Glaser
“Poke his eyes out and mutilate his genitalia, the fat lying bastard”
–The rabid faithful, MDNs passim
“On average, the study reports, only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores.”
–BBC News
“Study reports the obvious.”
–MDN
The iTMS is great, but it has hardly “revolutionized” music distribution, and neither will sub-quality movies on the iTMS “revolutionize” movie distribution. “Augment” sure. “Revolutionize?” Hardly.
1.5 Billion tracks in 3 years is good, but as a percentage of global music sales, were still talking about 2-3 % of global sales.
They said 5% was from online, not that the other 95% was stolen as Mr. Glaser stated.
“The iTunes Music Store has sold more than 1.5 billion tracks so far. If iPod owners aren’t buying all this music, then WHO IS?”
I currently have 160 tracks purchased from the iTMS, but I don’t currently own an iPod. I did at one time, but I sold it a while ago and haven’t bought another one yet (thinking about it given the recent updates). So I imagine there’s at least a few people like myself who buy their music off iTMS and just burn it to CD or listen to it on their computer (or stream it with AirTunes I guess).
I’d say about 75% of my 20gb iPod is composed of free audience-recorded live shows (check out bt.etree.org), most of the rest albums I’ve uploaded, along with a few miscellaneous sources. I think I have about 2 iTMS songs.
The majority of iPod owners in a major poll only have downloaded under 200 songs from iTMS.
I’m one of the high minority that have bought over 2500 songs from iTMS, it’s because I can afford it and someone has to support the artists.
Since reports on the Apple forums is that iTunes 7 is such a dumptruck of a update I have refused to update and have been slowly converting my 2500 iTMS DRM collection to Mp3’s.
Apple fscked up royally by holding my iTMS buying habit hostage to force me to upgrade my hardware by demanding I download that bloated iTunes 7 update.
My hardware has several good years of life in it.
Shame on Apple.
“Far more important to iPod owners, said the study, was free music ripped from CDs someone already owned or acquired from file-sharing sites.”
I don’t consider music ripped from CDs “free,” since I paid for those CDs.
Really the main reason for me not upgrading my hardware is the EFI based, Trusted Computing snitching, Intel based processors Apple switched to.
I can’t beleive people are buying Trusted Computing based hardware, don’t they know what it all entails?
“Since reports on the Apple forums is that iTunes 7 is such a dumptruck of a update I have refused to update and have been slowly converting my 2500 iTMS DRM collection to Mp3’s.”
Hm. Well, I’m guessing a few hundred thousand (if not over a million) people have downloaded iTunes 7. How many complaints are there on the Apple forums? How many times have you logged in to an internet forum in order to write about how well something works? A forum which is designed for reporting issues is not a balanced representation of the quality of a product. Don’t forget that half of all people are below average intelligence.
Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean iTunes 7 is not a dog. But by the time you convert all your tracks, there will probably have been a 7.01 or 7.1 update that addresses the issues. Aren’t there better ways to spend your time?
It’s all the music industries fault, not Apple’s. Apple is restricted in what they can offer by the entertainment industry. They set the guildelines. It took a lot of negotiating from Apple to get the entertainment industry to even allow an iTunes store. The other problem is most of the new music and movies are absolute crap. There’s very little quality any more. Most of my CD collection is 20 years old. I already own most of the music that I want to listen to. That CD collection has been put on my computer and iPods. It’s a great way to store it all and listen to it all. That said, if more quality music becomes available I would definitely only buy it on Apple’s iTunes store. I have bought a few hundred songs for my wife and kids but I would buy more if there was more quality. Movies are not something I want to buy. Kids movies maybe. Maybe a few real classics. I’d rather rent the movies with the option to buy. I try not to spend too much time watching television or movies anyway. More fun to live life.
Also what’s the big deal about buying on iTunes and then if you need to later just burning a CD of that music. That’s the ulitmate way to own your music. I use my iPod in every situation instead of CDs. What a waste of time using a CD.
i have about 1,800 itunes songs, about 8,000 total, and they are all on my 17″ laptop; i don’t own an ipod.
Don’t forget. Some of us live in countries where we don’t have purchasing access to the iTunes music store – in this case New Zealand. So of course we won’t have iTunes music on our iPods. How long will we continue in this underpriveleged stratus? Who know.
In the 3 years I’ve been buying songs from the iTunes store, I’ve “only” bought about 250 tracks. The overwhelming majority of the 2,000 songs on my iPod have come from ripping CDs. However, I can say I’ve literally only bought 2 CDs in the last year. The remainder of the new music I’ve purchased has been from the iTunes store.
I’ve bought around 200 tracks from iTMS. I play them on any of my 4 iPods and 6 Macs.
I’ve also bought around 50 TV show downloads from iTMS.
It’s not for everybody, but choice is good.
The iTMS has helped me discover lots of new music I never would have heard without a simple easy way to audition it.
The iTMS store reinvigorated my buying of music, previously with CD format, I’d been burned so many times I’d quit buying CDs. The ability to only buy a single song and to audition so many songs are huge bonus features for iTunes sales, at least for me.
Ditto what HD said. I think I’ve bought about 100 albums from iTMS. Half would remain unknown to me (and would not have been purchased) if there hadn’t been an iTMS. I rarely buy CDs anymore.
Before I owned an iPod I purchased tracks from iTunes. I would them burn them to CD (audio tracks) and then rip them back into Windows Media Player or MusicMatch Jukebox and put them on my 64MB mp3 player.
Then I got tired of that routine and bought an iPod. It is so easy to use and though my music purchased from iTunes is DRM protected, that protection does not get in the way of my enjoying my music easily and from any place.
Downloading songs illegaly off the net is fine by me. The record companies have been way too greedy in the past so this is pretty much a Robin Hood scenario. If the record companies hadn’t been so greedy people wouldn’t have started to download MP3 from the net even before napster and bought CDs instead. The bastard companies had this coming! F_ck ’em!
I expect the trend of buying music and TV shows to grow increasingly. With TV, I’m starting to realize that I don’t need to pay for cable to still watch all the shows I want to watch. I just get the airwaves TV and buy the other shows from iTunes. Cable is about $42 per month in my area, so that means I can by 21 TV shows per month. As people start figuring out and thinking about their watching habits, people might start dumping cable and only watching from iTunes, which would mean a lot of revenue goes to Apple instead of cable companies.
It’s a win-win situation since iTunes offers better quality (DVD vs. cable) and the choice to only pay for what I watch, so it can be cheaper, and no advertisements.
Poll Watcher… you’ve made 2500 purchases from the iTMS?
Really?
Under Purchase History of your account in iTMS where it indicates Viewing Batch 1 out of XXX (where XXX is equal to the number of pages required to contain your purchase history) … how many batches do your purchases represent? Inquiring minds want to know.
Not that I’m calling you a liar or anything but I have never met or heard of anyone who has invested as heavily as you have, to the tune of almost 3000 dollars, in the Apple iTMS and then turn around and disrespect them as you did for a software upgrade.
Incredible!
Emi:
No, a “Robin Hood” scenario would involve stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. You’re stealing from the rich and keeping it for your own personal benefit. Your actions in no way benefit anyone else, and in fact probably have detrimental effects on everyone else, including artists and composers who receive no royalties, and consumers, who eventually end up paying more or having less music available.
What you are doing is more accurately described as a “wild west” mentality. You decide what you want, you take it, and you seek to provide a little cover by blaming others for your actions. “Shot him? Hell, yeah, I shot him. Six times, square in the chest. But he had it comin’! Ya shoulda seen the way he wuz lookin’ at me!”
Finally, your statement that “if the record companies hadn’t been so greedy, people wouldn’t have downloaded CD’s for free…” is pretty ridiculous, unless you mean “if the record companies had given their music away, I might have chosen their free CDs over some stranger’s free downloads..”
But thanks for playing..
Under Purchase History of your account in iTMS where it indicates Viewing Batch 1 out of XXX (where XXX is equal to the number of pages required to contain your purchase history) … how many batches do your purchases represent? Inquiring minds want to know.
13 batches. (12 orders per page, some orders of mulitple songs of course, don’t know what that can tell you really)
My Purchased Playlist: 2754 items, 8:07:47:41 total time, 12.22 GB
All now completely stopped because of iTunes crap 7, I feel good too. It was a bad habit.
…to the tune of almost 3000 dollars, in the Apple iTMS and then turn around and disrespect them as you did for a software upgrade.
1: The 7.0 update is buggy beyond belief, it’s like Steve Jobs “magic just works touch” is gone. don’t beleive me, look on the Apple forums for iTunes Mac/PC.
2: The QT security updates went unpatched for many months leaving our Mac’s exposed to complete takeover from porn sites etc., so Apple could time the update with iTunes 7. They should have given Mac users a temp patch. Assholes.
3: Enriched content and bloated iTunes 7 has now hobbled my newbies basic Mac’s that are only a year old. It’s not right for Apple to hold iTMS buying hostage to force a hardware upgrade.
Apple wants it’s user base on EFI & Trusted Computing based Intel processors as fast as possible to bring in the iTV device with HDCP.
Notice the HDMI and Ethernet connections?
With EFI, HDCP and Trusted Computing, our machines will be owned by Hollywood and anyone else privvy to EFI based drivers which can contect the internet, download and do all sorts of things even before the operating system loads.
Trusted Computing is pure evil.
Read what John Gruber says:
http://daringfireball.net/2005/08/trusted
I’ve downloaded iTunes7 on 5 of my household’s Macs — all machines are working without a problem, including my oldest Mac still in use, a dual-800 PowerMac purchased in Sept. 2001.