News
iTunes Music Store sells over 50 million songs
“Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 50 million songs from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, not including songs redeemed from the currently-running Pepsi iTunes promotion. The 50 millionth song, purchased last Thursday afternoon, was “The Path of Thorns” by Sarah McLachlan. iTunes users are now downloading 2.5 million songs per week, which is an annual run rate of 130 million songs per year.
‘Crossing 50 million songs is a major milestone for iTunes and the emerging digital music era,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 50 million songs already downloaded and an additional 2.5 million songs being downloaded every week, it’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.’”
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1
What - I didn’t know anything about no ituna store letting people download my tracks. Thieving scum.
I’ll see them in court.
Posted by Sarah McLachlan on March 15, 2004 at 8:31 AM (PST)
2
Great….Now bring it to Canada and the rest of the world so we can join in on the fun…
Posted by dmo on March 15, 2004 at 8:43 AM (PST)
3
It would be interesting to see what the Pepsi promo is adding to those numbers.
Posted by ronco on March 15, 2004 at 8:53 AM (PST)
4
Just imagine the numbers when iTunes goes international…
Posted by kainjow on March 15, 2004 at 9:03 AM (PST)
5
Makes you wonder how this compares to Kazaa’s/eDonkey’s amount for daily downloads. Hehe.. :op
Seriously though, with p2p’s trillions of non-drm’ed audio downloads, it’s increasingly difficult to imagine itunes ever catching up.
Posted by eric on March 15, 2004 at 9:20 AM (PST)
6
50 million legal downloads is much better then 0.
Posted by kainjow on March 15, 2004 at 9:24 AM (PST)
7
This number is good for Apple, but ultimately what is it doing for the record companies (not that I’m concerned for the welfare of the RIAA)?
I think the 50 million downloads were by people who were serious prospects for buying an entire album the old fashioned way, but now have the opportunity to get the one track they want for 99 cents. The labels may have sacrificed a $13 sale for a buck with many of these downloads.
The online customers are coming from somewhere… some from Kazaa… some from legitimately buying full-priced CDs.
I think it’s bad news in the long run for the labels to sell the albums by parcel and piecemeal.
(Yes, I do agree that $50million is better than $0, but for who?)
Posted by BigSid in Los Angeles on March 15, 2004 at 9:53 AM (PST)
8
Sometimes it’s such a pain to download what I want from Kazaa (getting a complete track without interuptions in the song) I give up and buy it from iTunes.
Posted by Bud on March 15, 2004 at 10:00 AM (PST)
9
50 million songs downloaded in the US and zero in europe…..hmmmm. Doesn’t do me much good.
Posted by twum on March 15, 2004 at 10:26 AM (PST)
10
Wasn’t the goal supposed to be 100 million by this time?......
Posted by Scribble on March 15, 2004 at 3:18 PM (PST)
11
Everyone just better realize that AAC is THE compressed music standard and that all the others just plain suck. Now with all those millions of downloads at perfect quality, all you windows geeks with your ugly sounding WMA and even sorrier MP3 just better do a reformat and erase and jump on board the steamengine that did AAC and ITUNES music store. Matter of fact, just throw all your cd’s away while your at it after youve converted them to AAC.
Posted by tiger woods on March 15, 2004 at 5:01 PM (PST)
12
sorry, but 128 aac is hardly perfect quality
Posted by Fiddytree on March 15, 2004 at 5:24 PM (PST)
13
“sorry, but 128 aac is hardly perfect quality”
It’s a hell of a lot better than 128k WMA! Personally, i’m very happy with the quality of the tracks on iTMS. It would be perfect (in my eyes) if they offered 192k files instead, but you can’t always get what you want.
Posted by people are dumb on March 15, 2004 at 7:01 PM (PST)
14
Scribble,
The goal of 100 Million INCLUDES the promotions with AOL and Pepsi’s Giveaway, by April 28th. I wasn’t sure of this fact until As the Apple Turns went over Job’s speech here.
Posted by MacCodeSmith on March 16, 2004 at 3:15 AM (PST)
15
“It’s a hell of a lot better than 128k WMA! Personally, i’m very happy with the quality of the tracks on iTMS. It would be perfect (in my eyes) if they offered 192k files instead, but you can’t always get what you want.”
It’s very difficult to distinguish between the latest generation of formats at the same bit rates, and I don’t think you are able to do it. Especially since you consider 128kbps AAC to be fine.
Posted by MeshAir on March 16, 2004 at 7:17 AM (PST)
16
Before I see another post about it:
The goal is 100 million songs INCLUDING Pepsi giveaway songs.
These 50 million were BOUGHT, so they were exclusive from the Pepsi giveaway.
Everyone on the same page now?
Posted by Chris Derry on March 16, 2004 at 7:26 AM (PST)
17
And analysts are expecting in the range of 65-75 million… including Pepsi… still far short of the goal.
Yup, now we’re on that same page.
Posted by James on March 17, 2004 at 2:39 AM (PST)