Apple today announced iTunes downloads have topped 50 million, with the current weekly download rate being 2.5 million per week.
(See press release )
(See press release )
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iTunes downloads top 50 million
- Thread starter whooleytoo
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I think it was supposed to be by the 1-year anniversary, which would be April 28. Since that's about 6 and a half weeks away, it's not looking too good. At this rate, they'd only hit 66.25 million by then.javabear90 said:
April 28th eh? Maybe Jobs phrased the 100 million goal in a way that would allow including the Pepsi promo downloads (supposedly the 50 million number doesn't include them). That'd get Apple closer to 100 million. Probably still not enough though.
miloblithe said:
Yeah, I read in a USAToday article that they won't been able to release Pepsi cap numbers until after the promotion. Which means that iTMS is getting 2.5 million REGULAR paid songs a week. How many iPods have they shipped? I wonder if the iTMS will ever be selling more songs in a week than iPod's sold that week can hold?
At 2.5 million a week, that's a hair over 4 songs per second!
Got to love it.
How many article were written praising Dell and Napster saying they will over come ITMS? And ITMS will wither away. Soo much fot experts.
How many article were written praising Dell and Napster saying they will over come ITMS? And ITMS will wither away. Soo much fot experts.
'O well, I would prefer to read, "Apple sells 50 million G5 powerbooks", but you have to take what you can get.
wow, 2.5 million a week after almost a year (for Mac users)/6 months (for Windows users) that would not be bought if not for iTMS...
...and the RIAA execs think their time is better spent on suing mp3 sharers rather than developing better ways to distribute their product...
...and the RIAA execs think their time is better spent on suing mp3 sharers rather than developing better ways to distribute their product...
settledown said:
Napster is the only one that has remotely successful numbers. They recently announced 5 million songs at a 15 million dollar loss I think. The only way they are going to stay in business is if MS throws their marketing weight behind it, otherwise Apple is alone on the top of the pile by quite a bit.
What I would like to hear is numbers of unique accounts. It hardly even impresses me anymore to hear that Apple is killing everyone number-wise. The question for the future is if Apple has more customers. Otherwise we'll be seeing a repeat of 20 years ago when Apple dominated an early market but couldn't grow with it. How mature is the legal music download service? Will numbers eventually climb to 100 million a week for the market with Apple still own selling 2.5 million of them?
eSnow said:
What?
With Napster recently having reported crossing the 5 Million song mark (and, reportedly, being the first to do so), this puts iTMS about an order of magnitude farther along than any of the competition. How is Apple being locked out? Why should Apple let others rebrand iTMS? Why should Apple pay the royalties to MS to allow them to run the admittedly inferior codec of WMA?
Give me a break...
eSnow said:
other parts of your post, i can see the argument for, but the lack of .wma is a non-issue, i'd say.
you can't use iTMS without iTunes (windows or Mac) and iTunes play iTMS songs (duh). --> anyone who can buy iTMS songs can play AAC.
so why do we need .wma?
if you don't have an AAC portable player, you convert to mp3.
if you insist on using .wma, then you are probably better off using other services... and the indication is that those services are yet to catch up to iTMS. i think the logic should be for those other services to adopt AAC, not for iTMS to adopt WMA..?
AirUncleP said:
considering the success of supposedly "overpriced" iPod Mini, i don't think there's any reason for apple to lower the price on iPod...
let's face it, we all want price drops on iPod because we want more stuff for cheap - we don't really care if there's any good reason other than that?
Photorun said:
i'm pretty sure the top of the thread says no
this is definitely very cool, i bought my first song a few days ago
I think this is good news all around. There is an article on wired.com today about how great the iPod mini is, and then this great news. The publicity machine is hard to stop now.
Funny to think that so far 50mil have been sold and double that amount are being given away. I know they don't plan to see even half of the Pepsi songs being used, but still, it's a nice program and people should take more advantage. I know I have.
As for .wma...ha, I could care less if Apple never even gives it a second thought. I used to have a wintel box that I used for some games and such and I remember ripping CDs in what was supposed to be "CD quality" .wma files. They sounded like 3rd generation 128kps MP3s, which is to say crap. That's really my only experience with it however, I am sure it sounds better at higher bit rates, but I don't care, I like my AAC.
Funny to think that so far 50mil have been sold and double that amount are being given away. I know they don't plan to see even half of the Pepsi songs being used, but still, it's a nice program and people should take more advantage. I know I have.
As for .wma...ha, I could care less if Apple never even gives it a second thought. I used to have a wintel box that I used for some games and such and I remember ripping CDs in what was supposed to be "CD quality" .wma files. They sounded like 3rd generation 128kps MP3s, which is to say crap. That's really my only experience with it however, I am sure it sounds better at higher bit rates, but I don't care, I like my AAC.
Apple pages said:
Apple, don't be so arrogant. If you loose your imagination others will push you aside again and profit from your "insanly great idea".
I seriously doubt they are that arrogant--Jobs is too smart for that. However, it's in their interest to be perceived as *the* online music service. Apple wants people to believe that other services are only "bit players," and so they should stick with ITMS. People have to believe a business is in it for the long haul--especially when the product requires extended customer service, like the ITMS does in order for its DRM to work.spinko said: