“The online digital music business stinks,” Kevin Maney reports for USA Today. “iTunes, Rhapsody, Zune Store, Napster — you name it. They’re all failures.”
Maney reports, “Nearly six years after the introduction of iTunes and the iPod, online music has failed to interest the vast majority of the world’s music consumers. Which is no doubt why Steve Jobs recently called for an end to copy-protection software on digital songs. Something has to change, or iTunes and its ilk will never break into the mass market.”
Maney reports, “Jobs admitted that iTunes’ penetration has been weak. In his discussed-to-death essay, ‘Thoughts On Music’ — posted a couple of weeks ago on Apple’s website — Jobs noted that only about 3% of songs on a typical iPod are bought on iTunes.”
MacDailyNews Take: Because the vast majority people’s music collections are already contained on CDs, Kevin. People did not throw away their entire CD collections when they bought iPods, they ripped them all to iTunes (and it took forever!) thereby negating the need to buy them via the iTunes Store. Common sense is your friend, Kevin. Try using it from now on, if you possess any. The iTunes Store sales are only really for new music that people don’t already have on CD and who are willing to pay for convenience over bit rate. Truth be told, most iPod+iTunes users are unaware that there’s DRM involved at all. Apple’s FairPlay DRM is that unobtrusive.
Maney continues, “In a report released in December, Forrester Research said it did a strenuous, independent analysis of iTunes purchases… Forrester found that the number of monthly transactions per iTunes household was declining in 2006… About 10% of buyers purchased just one track during the entire year. About one-quarter of buyers spent $5 or less for the year.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, 90% of buyers purchased more than one track during the year and three-quarters of buyers spent more than $5 for the year, right? Regardless, Kevin, a week after that “strenuous, independent analysis” you reference, Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff set the record straight: “For the record, iTunes sales are not collapsing” and bemoaned the hysterical media headlines and incorrect stories the original report ginned up. Yes, Kevin, your story fits the bill. Except, yours is actually worse since the facts have already been corrected by Forrester themselves (and by multiple other outlets, see related articles below) and follows other reports such as the December 13, 2006 analysis from Piper Jaffray that looked at music sales data and saw strong y/y growth in 2005 and 2006. Specifically, the firm compared total sales between Jan. and Sept. of ’05 and ’06 and saw 78% growth during that period. Or the December 14, 2006 news from comScore Networks which stated that revenue from Apple Computer’s iTunes digital media download service rose by 84 percent during the first three quarters of 2006 versus the same period one year ago as a result of a 67 percent increase in the number of iTunes buying transactions. Kevin, iTunes is not a failure. There’s only one failure involved in your article. Yes, Kevin, that would be you as a journalist. It’s a good thing you work for USA Today where such matters as journalism and fact-checking seem to be meaningless. Based on history, we strongly suspect such breaches might actually be punishable offenses at good ol’ USA Fishwrap.
Maney continues, “After Jobs released his essay, I asked Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris why he chose to do it at that time. She said there was no particular reason. But Jobs never does anything for no particular reason. He manipulates the media and timing better than anyone in tech. More likely, Jobs realized it was time to save iTunes.”
Full article here.
Removing DRM from online music would certainly help online music sales. But, let’s face facts: most people own iPods and, for those that use the iTunes Store, the DRM is hardly, if at all, noticeable. If you really want to increase iTunes Store sales, how about, oh, increasing the bit rate? We know we’d pay more for 192 kbps (or more) encoding, so imagine if the music cartel allowed Apple to boost the bit rate and continue selling the higher quality tracks for the same 99-cents?
Maney makes far too great a leap in trying to link Jobs’ call for DRM-free music to some imagined “failure” of the iTunes Store. In fact, Apple’s iTunes Store is a raging success. Apple’s iTunes Store has sold over two billion songs and is now the fourth largest music retailer in the US, ahead of #5 Amazon.com and closing in on #3 Target. That Maney also relies on that ridiculously overblown, widely- and successfully-disputed Forrester report/blog posting is laughable.
Some advice for Kevin Maney: try reporting the facts and not ham-handedly attempting to twist them to fit whatever doltish fantasy you’ve concocted for the day.
Related articles:
Apple’s iTunes Store passes two billion songs milestone; 50m TV shows & over 1.3m movies sold – January 09, 2007comScore: Apple iTunes sales are surging; revenue grew 84% during first 3 quarters of 2006 – December 14, 2006
Forrester’s Bernoff: ‘iTunes sales are NOT plummeting! Press credibility, on the other hand…’ – December 13, 2006
Jim Cramer on Apple iTunes Store and ‘that stupid Forrester survey’ – December 13, 2006
Piper Jaffray: Apple iTunes Store sales show strong year-over-year growth – December 13, 2006
Apple on Forrester report: ‘the conclusion that iTunes sales are slowing is simply incorrect’ – December 12, 2006
Blackfriars’ does the math: Apple iTunes sales are not ‘collapsing’ – December 12, 2006
Digital downloads drive world music sales in first half of 2006 – October 13, 2006
Study reports the obvious: most music on iPods not from iTunes Store – September 17, 2006
MDN is in good form today .. good read
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Funny take MDN.
iTunes has been such a failure in the past 6 year that I’ve only spent a little over $800.00 on music.
Brace for the “what a tool” comments.
This guy writes like a fifth grader.
Another MDN scraping the barrel article for something remotely anti-Apple. There is nothing wrong here, SJ himself admitted DRM does not promote digital downloads. Most people still buy CDs. This is just common sense. No Apple bashing at all.
If iTunes is a failure, and yet has outpaced Amazon.com in sales, then that’s obviously grave news for Amazon, as well. Perhaps Jeff Bezos should just shut the company down and give the money … well, you know.
Canned Radio Stations, Record Companies pimping the same sh*t, TV ‘Music’ channels that don’t play music. These are far more important than DRM.
This is what a real radio station sounds like.
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs
The strategy of tech writers today seems to be, if you can’t find a story, make one up. We see this all the time now…these guys pulling stuff out of their butts.
Oh yeah, and USA Today is “journalism”.
ROFLMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow… I mean…. I think I’m speechless. Whatever happened to journalistic integrity?
MDN has it wrong. I would never prefer any bit rate, DRM free mp3s over CDs. Those facets wouldn’t matter to the average Joe Ipod Owner. And you have it wrong by saying people didn’t throw away their music collection being the reason that itunes sales are low. Most people still want a real CD, not restricted, protected AACs. Why pay 10$ for the opportunity to burn a transcoded, low bit rate CD, when playing a burnt cd has the image of it being illegally burnt. People listen to music on other things than iPods and itunes.
that guy is a tool.. [/brace]
Just had a thought… Toolbar- where the dorks go for a drink.
“”Nearly six years after the introduction of iTunes and the iPod, online music has failed to interest the vast majority of the world’s music consumers. Which is no doubt why Steve Jobs recently called for an end to copy-protection software on digital songs. Something has to change, or iTunes and its ilk will never break into the mass market.””
One has nothing to do with the other. Most people dont even know there’s DRM on the music, or what it even does. If the vast majority of people aren’t using iTunes its because the market is still relatively new and there is still a lot of growth. There are vast amounts of average people who don’t even know what iTunes is or that you can buy music from it.
Steve’s call to end DRM has NOTHING to do with this.
“Worse for Apple, Forrester found that the number of monthly transactions per iTunes household was declining in 2006. “It is too soon to tell if this decline was seasonal or if buyers were reaching their saturation level for digital music,” the report says.”
Which was rebutted by Apple at Macworld AND even Forrester has since revised their data.
“But for the majority of people, downloading songs is too hard and too frustrating. Some of that problem is the digital rights management (DRM) software that limits where and how songs can be played.”
I love how this guy makes up random cause and effect scenarios. DRM has nothing to do with how easy it is to download music. I mean has this guy ever even seen iTunes? How much easier can they make it. Maybe if they had a way to let you think what song you want and it magically appeared on your iPod, then that would be easier.
Another stupid comment:
“There are other reasons downloads are stalled. People who grew up with CDs — or vinyl LPs before that — like the packaging and cover art, and like to get songs deep in an album that are not hits but grow on you over time. At 99 cents a song, digital downloads don’t offer enough value to give up the packaged CD niceties.”
Ok yeah so people read liner notes. Sometimes. But I dont know I’ve ever heard anyone say hey let me buy this CD with a bunch of songs i dont like and let me talk myself into liking them. The point is moot, because you can buy the whole CD through iTunes anyway and let the ‘grow’ on you. Again another nonsensical rationale to fit his fantasy conclusions.
Dear Kevin. Can you get me a job at USA Today? It seems anyone with a keyboard can get a job there.
If iTS is a failure, what could you call the Zune Marketplace or whatever it goes by?
Hmmm, I guess 2 billion songs and (what now??) 100 million iPods is just a failure. ” Nothing to see here folks, just a change in the way the world works. Keep moving. Hey, go read Enderle will ya” LOL
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
N.
What a TOOL ! ! !
There … satisfied?
Got a two-way here. My iPod, even with its better-than-white-buds ear-pieces, is just about good enough to make 128 sound ‘full’. For ‘full’ sound at 192 you need something closer to “speakers”. Now, it may well be true that I’m listening to “Shambala” on my desktop right now … what’s your point? If iTunes is a support agency for the iPod that should not matter! OK … that isn’t the half of what the iTunes Store is about. WE have to quit linking the two before they do – long before.
He was right that Jobs never EVER says anything “for publication” that isn’t placed for good reasons. OK, it may take weeks, months, or years to figure out what those reasons might be/have been, but he has them.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
Hey, if USAToday said it, it must be true. I mean, they don’t just print that stuff without checking out the facts. The same is true for the Newsweek interview with Bill Gates. If it’s in print – it must be true.
wings2Sky,
You’re equating direct quotes in Newsweek (for which Gates could easily sue if misquoted) to pure conjecture that’s not at all backed up by facts in the USA Today?
Where the fsck did you get your education?
I apologize in advance if, as I suspect, you are mentally-challenged. If so, nevermind the above and good luck in the Special Olympics!
Here’s what would need to be done to get me to stop purchasing CD’s:
1. Lose the DRM
2. Provide music in a lossless format (preferably FLAC). Apple’s lossless is proprietary and not used anywhere other than iTunes.
3. Provide PDF of album cover and liner notes.
4. Sell it at a lower price than the CD
80% marketshare and iTunes music store is failure. Well I wish I owned such a failure. What a total way out incredible non-sense of a FUD story this is.
My girl friend liked a few of my Seal tunes while making love.
She asked if I had any more? I lost that CD 10 years ago. It was published
in 1994. What did I do? Looked for it at my local CD shop. Not there.
Went on iTunes Music Store, found it, Seal by Seal – which is great by the way.
Then bought only the songs I did not have. 7 bucks instead of 14.99 on amazon
or the whole cd for 10.00.
That is what iTunes is for as well as distributing new music you idiot.
Have a coke and a smile.
D
Yeah – it doesn’t work for me. After years of buying CDs with two or three good songs and the rest mediocre to poor, I quit buying CDs. Then along came iTunes. I have purchased more music from them in the last year than I have on CD in the previous three. Not to mention a few movies that are handy to have when I am on the road. Yup – utter failure for me. Glad we have these incisive journalists out there FUDing their way around.
iTunes was a driver to sell iPods. Everyone and his uncle admits that iPods are wildly successful.
“Brace for the “what a tool” comments.”
Yup…what a major league tool!!!!!!
The iTunes Store is selling upward of 3 million songs a day plus videos on top of that! How is that a failure at any level?
Yeah, I want this guy as my stock broker.
Typically stupid American journalist.
C’mon, it’s USA Today, it’s a freaking tabloid, mildly obnoxious and largely forgettable, then print equivalent to Fox news.
Sorry MDN but Kevin is right.
iTunes Store is a masterful failure. Jobs said so himself when he spoke of 2% of iPod space taken by downloaded music from the iTMS.
What real incentive is there to download – instant acess yes, but no price break; and its price that drives people.
It is not that different from the VHS versus DVD cost differential. VHS tapes cost more to produce than the pennies it takes to make a DVD but DVDs are more expensive to buy – a quality premium. This is gradually changing but not fast enough.
If SJ could announce that all tracks are 49 cents there would be a big enough differential to give the store a real chance to take off. Everyone knows that downloaded music has minimal overhead and potentially huge profit for someone. As it is you can buy the CD for the same price as the download and rip it, pass or sell it on – why opt for download with no physical media for your money. Apple have the best store on the market but even they are pegged by the money the record companies demand. DRM is not a big deal – particularly when so little of the music on iPods has been bought via download.
If the market is going to go anywhere the price needs fixing, DRM is secondary. If everyone can agree on open wifi standards so could they on an open standard DRM or indeed no DRM.
No one can put ‘Rip-Burn-Listen’ or ‘rip&play;’ back in its box – so the dynamics will need a significant shift to make the business head in another direction.
The “journalist” himself is a failure!
MDN – how often do you buy from the iTunes store? How many songs in your iPod collection are purchased via the iTunes store?
iTunes is the software one needs to put the songs on the iPod, but one never has to buy anything from the iTunes store.
We have 5 ipods in our family and not one person has ever purchased a song, movie or whatever via the iTunes store.
@hagar57
“C’mon, it’s USA Today, it’s a freaking tabloid, mildly obnoxious and largely forgettable, then print equivalent to Fox news.”
yup, and 60 Minutes also
USA Today is a joke.
Costco is a failure.
It must be, I have never shopped there.
Social values in this society have really gotten screwed up. Since when does any product have to appeal to “everybody” to be successful? Are we turning into a “one size fits all” society, where BMWs and Chevys are both just “cars”? The iPod has single-handedly created a music revolution. What dolt would ignore that interesting little fact?
Calling iTS a failure is ridiculous. Music downloading is not a failure.
Downloading in its current incarnation is limited, true, but that is not a failure.
The limit is not the price point itself. Per track, download stores are in line with CD (the ability for the consumer to buy a single tracks of their own choosing makes up for that), but the consumer is getting music with inferior sound quality. The limit to some extent is DRM, but I believe it has less to do with “interoperability” than the limit on the absolute number of devices.
The bottom line is: why should I pay for a download, when for a similar price I can have the same thing with no DRM and full quality?
“iTunes Store is a masterful failure. Jobs said so himself when he spoke of 2% of iPod space taken by downloaded music from the iTMS.”
Sorry, but that doesn’t mean that. That means that iTS consumers converted their entire catalog of music and put it on their iPod. So, you are comparing many years of music purchases vs. a only a few years?
Even if a consumer is buying 50% of their tracks via iTS, that could easily be only 2% of their total music collection.
Agree with MDN’s take. We never have had a problem with Fairplay and would purchase more songs if the bit rate was higher and the price remained the same or was no larger than $1.25 per track.
Peace.
From reading the comments of Kevin Maney it is my overrated opinion that Mr Maney suffers from a procession of ingrown toenails.
Oh, I beg your pardon. Permit me to introduce myself as your humble ingrown toenail analyst.
The pain associated with this condition makes its way to the gadget-interested lobe of the brain via the anal port. It often manifests itself in
an iTunes histrionics episode. This type of episodic tirade is usually offloaded to analgesic entitiies such as USA Today. However, in Kevins case it appears to be chronic.
There may be nothing that can be done for Mr Maney. I would suggest wrapping the offending toe in an Apple iPod sock. I’m sorry, Mr Maney,
but I find your condition really disgusting and I’ve got to go, now.
Music downloading is a failure? Someone forgot to tell Tower Records.
Isn’t iTunes now the third or fourth biggest seller of music? How can that be considered a failure? This guy is an idiot.
Microsoft and Dell dominate marketshare and are pulling in billions of dollars each year. Would you consider them to be successes or failures? There are many ways to measure success and failure. Apple was successful even when their marketshare was below 2%.
USA Today is just trolling for hits. Just ignore it. Don’t waste your energy emailing the reporter.
All this talk about bit rates etc, doesn’t affect most people. Most people don’t know what a bit is. DRM they may know about, esp. if they have bought downloads from non-ITunes stores.
Yeah, I like liner notes; I buy CDs and rip them. All of my favorite artists I buy CD, but most of my music purchases comes from ITunes. I download the particular songs I am looking for – usually the one stuck in my head, or one I want to use to for an iMovie. I also download songs/artists that just seem interesting, its a way to see if I like them for 99 cents vs. 17 dollars. I also buy the whole album from iTunes. For several reasons, maybe the CD is hard-to-find, maybe its actually cheaper to buy via iTunes, maybe I don’t want to wait to get it and pay shipping or have to drive to the music store, or maybe I just don’t want another CD case that I never open cluttering my house.
There are lots of reasons why people use iTunes, and those reasons are why iTunes isn’t a failure. as children who have grown up downloading songs grow up, it will become even more of a success.
In 20-40 years, physical media in general is going to go the way of the LP, cassette and VHS tape.
On the one hand, the average is 22 iTunes sales per iPod – NOT MUCH. Either people buy iPods to listen to oldies, or they buy a few iTunes then switch back to CDs.
On the other hand, the iTunes store is designed to sell iPods, and sales of iPods have been good – VERY GOOD.
Since the iPod is a success, and the iTunes store contributes to the success of the iPod, who is to say whether the iTunes store is a success or a failure.
If you wish to argue that that digital music sales have failed to halt piracy….
Check on Maney’s lame band “Not Dead Yet” at http://www.kevinmaney.com.
One thing we can say with assurance, he doesn’t know music, or he would be in such a lame band.
American Idol would not send him to Hollywood.
Check on Maney’s lame band “Not Dead Yet” at http://www.kevinmaney.com.
One thing we can say with assurance, he doesn’t know music, or he would be in such a lame band.
American Idol would not send him to Hollywood.
Check on Maney’s lame band “Not Dead Yet” at http://www.kevinmaney.com.
One thing we can say with assurance, he doesn’t know music, or he would be in such a lame band.
American Idol would not send him to Hollywood.
send replies to:
accuracy@usatoday.com
Though they probably review that as well as the rest of “the facts”
Now that head line is misleading. The article includes ALL DIGITAL MUSIC STORES as failures, not just iTunes. The author speaks of a failed business model. I don’t agree with him, but regardless, MDN should wright their headlines accordingly.
Yea, twisting facts but the upside is that if everyone starts believing in that, maybe DRM will go away …
Something wrong with this email address: accuracy@usatoday.com
The two things don’t go together!
What might help iTunes more would be to release some of the tracks that are trapped in “album only” mode.
U2’s U218 singles album (I think that’s the title; don’t have access to iTunes at the moment), for example, contains mostly existing U2 songs, and a couple of new ones. However, you can’t get the new ones unless you buy all the classic ones as well. Fine, except most people already have some or all of them, so they are forcing re-purchase of music. Just look at the reviews for this item – lots of pretty angry people about this.
Limewire is still the most popular way to download online music. Maybe Lord Jobs is finally starting to wake up.
Hey…
I answered a whole pile of questions about the iTunes store a couple of months back. It was a very detailed survey.
I am just thinking that it was this survey which prompted Steve Jobs to write his letter about DRM.
It also presumably provided Apple with a lot of data about how people use the store and what is on their iPods.
Did anyone else do this survey?
I have never bought anything from the iTunes store. When the survey asked me why not, these were my reasons:
1. Low quality – not good for classical and opera
2. Backup – prefer to have the CD
3. Have a huge amount of music already (30 days of continuous music!)
4. Classical/Opera is more of an album based purchase, not track by track. So cost is also an issue
I don’t think DRM would matter to me that much – but I guess that among the people responding to the survey, DRM must have been a big deal or SJ would not have written that letter…
Since when are they hiring specialy challenged people at usa today. Im sorry, Let me refrain that statement since im not PC.
That guy who wrote the column is a retard!!!!
Since Maney failed to adequately quantify “failure” or “success” much less report actual “profit” ot “loss” I have to assume that he knows nothing about the subject he pretends to understand.
This guy is out-of-touch. I ripped my entire collection of music CDs to my Mac which synchs to several iPods so I can listen in the car, as I word, when I walk. I hated looking for that “special” CD when I wanted to listen to music before. In fact, now I listen to audio books (http://www.audible.com) and am a monthly subscriber ($19.95 every month gets me two books) and I NEVER BOUGHT audio books before. I seldom bought books… so that’s another win for digital media providers.
I cannot recall the last time I bought a CD… I have purchased a number of songs from iTunes… the most recent one a few days ago. I can’t wait for movies to follow music… it will happen faster than you can say iTunes.
Consider me a happy Mac, iPod, iTunes and audible.com patron.
That guy is a retard! I know, I state the obvious. Failure??? This guy is CLUELESS!