Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over five billion songs from the iTunes Store. iTunes is the number one music retailer in the US and features the largest music catalog with over eight million songs.
MacDailyNews Note: On February 26, 2008, Apple announced they had hit the 4 billion songs sold mark. They’ve now sold over 1 billion more songs in just the last four months or 250 million songs per (non-holiday, non-gift card) month on average.
Also, iTunes customers are now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, making iTunes the world’s most popular online movie store.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s quite the “hobby.” Apple is now selling or renting 1.5 million movies per month. Hello, Wall Street? Alternate headline: “Netflix execs use pants as toilets.”
iTunes features movies from all of the major movie studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema. Users can rent movies and watch them on their Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and on a widescreen TV with Apple TV. iTunes Store customers can also purchase new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios on the same day as their DVD release.
The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over eight million songs, over 20,000 TV episodes and over 2,000 films including over 350 in stunning high definition video. With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as iTunes Movie Rentals, integrated podcasting support, iMix playlist sharing, the ability to turn previously purchased tracks into complete albums at a reduced price, and seamless integration with iPod and iPhone, the iTunes Store is the best way for Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music and video online.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Note:
The Apple iTunes Store Milestones:
• June 19, 2008: 5 billion songs sold.
• February 26, 2008: 4 billion songs sold.
• July 31, 2007: 3 billion songs sold.
• April 09, 2007: 2.5 billion songs sold.
• January 09, 2007: 2 billion songs sold.
• February 23, 2006: 1 billion songs sold.
• February 7, 2006: 950 million songs sold.
• January 9, 2006: 850 million songs sold.
• October 25, 2005: Available in Australia.
• August 4, 2005: Available in Japan.
• July 17, 2005: 500 million songs sold.
• May 10, 2005: 400 million songs sold. Available in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
• January 24, 2005: 250 million songs sold.
• December 16, 2004: 200 million songs sold.
• December 2, 2004: Available in Canada.
• October 26, 2004: Available in the European Union.
• October 14, 2004: 150 million songs sold.
• July 12, 2004: 100 million songs sold.
• June 15, 2004: Available in UK France Germany.
• April 28, 2004: 70 million songs sold.
• March 15, 2004: 50 million songs sold.
• December 15, 2003: 25 million songs sold.
• October 16, 2003: Available for windows. 13 million songs sold.
• September 8, 2003: 10 million songs sold.
• June 23, 2003: 5 million songs sold.
• May 14, 2003: 2 million songs sold.
• May 5, 2003: One million songs sold.
• April 28, 2003: Launched in United States.
I hope that we don’t find out that the 50,000 movie rentals are mainly people going for the 99¢ movie rental on Tuesdays.
I will have to say that when you look at this movies and the associated list of what other people rented it includes all of the other 99¢ movies.
iTunes, bitch!
Looks like sales are still accelerating. Won’t be long before the entire music industry implodes, now that customers have the upper hand and can buy only the tracks they want. This should be fun to watch.
Napster VP: “Will there be an alarm bell when it’s time to panic or was that it?”
Blockbuster VP: “That was it.”
Awesome – it good to see that AppleTV 2.0 seems to be getting better acceptance and the rental model is being used. Now if we could just keep the rented movies for longer than 24 hours after we start watching them.
As for me – I rent on average 1 – 2 movies from iTunes per week and am very happy with both the download streaming speed as well as the video quality – with a 60″ HDTV.
Way to go Apple!
This is nuts!
I love it, I love Apple, I am full of love today!
Too bad I am married with children 🙁
Oh, and I forgot about TWC, once they put limit on downloads, the sales might go down.
Is there anything we can do to stop TWC from doing this stupid move?
I wish there was fiber provider in my area so I could switch.
Future Day #1: Apple adds a way to surf the web from it, and an OTA HD tuner for HD locals.
Future Day #2: I buy two more Apple TV’s (have a 160gb one now) and then I place the call to DirecTV…”Hello DirecTV…bu bye”
In other news, the iPod Killer’s prison sentence was just changed from life in solitary confinement to death.
@Rob
Don’t worry about TWC. I’m sure that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Yahoo, have already planned out their demise. They won’t allow this to happen.
TimeWarner/ATT/Comcast enjoy your profits now. I imagine consumers won’t be paying for net access much longer.
…… and the hits just keep on comin’
” ….. I hope that we don’t find out that the 50,000 movie rentals are mainly people going for the 99¢ movie rental on Tuesdays ….. “
I didn’t even know about 99¢ Tuesdays! Thanks for the heads up. (Where the hell have I been?) I don’t even have an Apple TV. I download to my iPhone and plug into regular TV with RCA jacks.
But now I have a very serious question:
How in the hell do you create the “cents” mark on your keyboard?! WTF!! And I call myself a designer.
Approx. 3 years to sell 1st billion. 1 year to sell 2nd billion. 6 months to sell 3rd and 4th billion. 4 months to sell 5th billion….. That’s an impressive growth curve!
BTW, it is amazing that iTunes’ servers and backend can deal with this kind of growth curve. Hugely impressive that they don’t have dropouts and outages!
So, if this growth rate continues, how many years until they reach TS (terasong)?
So, the iTune Store is now at a rate of selling 5.5 M songs per DAY!
Not too shabby…
@ Dumb x2
cent mark (¢) <– option key – 4 or option key – $
Wow, Apple does keep sales statistics! Considering Apple’s failure to provide sales data for its other products, I thought no one at Apple had a clue how well its products were selling.
How about sales statistics for MBA, iMac, MacPro, etc. Hmmm? Maybe these numbers are not so “positive” or are not so “newsworthy”.
Oh, well, nothing like a little Apple propaganda to keep the fanbois in state of ignorant bliss.
@ Dumb x2
You should learn how to use the option/alt key. It’s pretty cool.
to get a ‘¢’ press “alt+4”.
The option key gives you all sorts of cool signs like
¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æΩ≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷
and alt+shift gives you
⁄€‹›fifl‡°·‚—±ÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚÆŒ„´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏”’¸˛Ç◊ı˜Â¯˘¿
Here is to for being so cool.
That is an insane growth rate on music sales – we could easily see 7 billion by Christmas!!
MW ‘what’ as in what the f…?
To Ha, ha:
At least you get points for trying… but there simply isn’t any way to spin this against Apple, try it as you may.
fef????
feb26nd-june19th=114 days.
1 billion songs in 114 days makes 8,77 million a day.
that is amazing.
Alternate headline: Blockbuster & NetFlix ponder pant loads, as iTunes positions to crush the physical movie rental market.
Ha, ha…
I spoke to Steve, Phil, Tim and the boys and they agreed that they should publish all of that market-sensitive information about how many models they sell right down to which options customers choose.
About the time that Microsoft publishes honest statistics about how many Vista and Windows Mobile licences are actually in use by real users as opposed to locked up in a safe at an OEM manufacturer in Taiwan.
And also about the time that HP, Dell and the rest of the WinDell gang do the same thing.
Tell me, when you go on holiday, does your village have to go to a temp agency for a stand-in idiot or do you have a permanent deputy?
¢¢¢¢¢¢¢
Now my mac life is complete.
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Thanks.