Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPod Family, iTS
iTunes per iPod
The folks over at Downhill Battle have taken a close look at what Apple's press releases say about the iTunes Music Store and the iPod after the iTMS one year anniversary. The results are interesting. Despite the overwhelming success of the iTMS, a very small percentage of the content on iPods is downloaded through iTMS. So what are people doing with the rest of their space? No one knows. The authors seem to assume that all iPods are loaded up with music from other sources. No doubt that's where the majority of the space is going: music ripped from CDs and some music downloaded from other sources. They seem to ignore, however, the iPod's ability to download large audio books from Audible and other sources, the iPod Photo's goal of storing pictures, and the iPod's general utility as a FireWire/USB 2.0 drive, among other uses. I can think of a lot of things to do with all that space.
Update: for those of you who want the most up-to-date stats, the most recent number put the ratio between 25-1 and 40-1, depending on whether you like your stats official or unofficial. It's still a drop in the bucket, and puts the real effect of the iTMS on music consumption in perspective.
[via Boing Boing]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave said 1:43PM on 6-15-2005
don't forget about the mass millions that DON'T use all their space. I know quite a few of my friends that have about 12 hours of songs (12 albums) on their 20 gig ipod.
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d.w. said 1:47PM on 6-15-2005
Those are really old numbers (April 2004).
The most recent numbers I've seen (during last week's WWDC Keynote) were 430 million iTMS songs and 16 million iPods.
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boss sauce said 1:48PM on 6-15-2005
remember those "What's on your PowerBook?" ads?
On my iPod:
~200 CD's ripped my way (192 AAC),
~30 CD's from friends' iTunes collections,
~100 songs from gnutella network (trying before buying),
a few hundred songs I streamripped,
a few radio programs I audio hijacked (Audbile is TOO EXPENSIVE),
a few dozen songs I found online,
my iPhoto library (as data-- it's not an iPod photo),
1 free iTMS song,
ZERO purchased iTMS songs.
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fishpatrol said 1:57PM on 6-15-2005
I really like to be on the cutting edge of technology. When CDs came out, I sold all my LPs and bought the CD versions. Of course plenty of those LPs never made it to disc, the compact kind, but I figured I should sell those too.
Then the iTMS came around and I started the process again: sold off, or just plain pitched all my CDs and started to download iTMS tracks to my iPod, mostly to avoid the task and trial of encoding all those songs myself.
Unfortunately, trying to keep at the crest, I 'upgraded' from a 2G 10gig iPod to the new 1GB Shuffle (so cool!) and now only listen to a handful of songs. I've had two or three people tell me this was pretty crazy. But I must say I disagree. I may not have much music to listen to, but I listen in the hippest way out there (yes I use the lanyard). (constantly)
So in short, and to sum up, if these numbers are actually correct, there must be a lot of lame, so-tragically-behind-the-times people out there. Get with it, people. This is a 128bps era, get on board!
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john said 2:11PM on 6-15-2005
I have alot more than 21 songs on my ipod, but I use the rest of the space to take tivo shows off my girls friends laptop and put them on mine.
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Felipe said 2:11PM on 6-15-2005
Well, since iTunes is not available in my country, I also have zero iTMS songs in my iPod photo. There is about 13GB of my ripped CDs and about 600 photos, 5 thousand more photos to come as soon as I buy a HD case and get my old pics.
Seems like a 0.1a research to me... there are too many variables those guys didn't account for.
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narco said 2:44PM on 6-15-2005
I only actually bought 3 songs on iTunes, two of them were New Order tracks just because I wanted to "try it out" when iTMS first came to be.
I think a lot of other people will agree with me when I say that the two major reasons why I don't buy from iTunes is: DRM, bitrates. I'd like to choose my bitrate and even though I don't burn CD's, I'd like to be able to do so as many times as I feel like it in the future.
Plus who knows, maybe I don't want an iPod 5 years from now. I like having that type of freedom, especially since I spend so much time ripping my music.
But I have a 60GB iPod (which I am selling, by the way) with 50 gigs of music. 90% of it is ripped from CD or vinyl, the other 10% is from the good ol' Napster days. This was back when it was OK to illegally download music.
Fishes,
narco.
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John P. Speno said 2:57PM on 6-15-2005
I've bought 54 songs from iTMS, but don't have an iPod...
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Bob the Pirate said 3:59PM on 6-15-2005
narco how much you seeling it for?
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random said 4:43PM on 6-15-2005
I have 45 or so songs from the ITMS but I've never paid for a single one. How? Freebies. Nothing but weeks of free songs and Pepsi caps.
The rest of my iPod Mini is filled with about 40 CDs worth of songs.
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Travis said 4:53PM on 6-15-2005
I have 88 songs from iTms and growing..
if you use the numbers jobs said at wwdc you get 27 songs per iPod
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Heather said 5:02PM on 6-15-2005
This is a complete joke, right? I don't buy that many CDs anymore but I have around a thousand CDs and I ripped most of them to my powerMac (at the 192 rate). I did this over time once I got my 40gig iPod last year. I have bought maybe 100 songs from itunes, but the huge majority are from my own CDs, using the shuffle feature to play my iPod like it was my own "radio station".
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Jim in Holland said 5:23PM on 6-15-2005
Geez - what a lame article! Completely crap statistics that ignore the fact CDs account for most of the music on an iPod or in iTunes. Hell - before there was the iTunes store, the only way you got music into the pod was via CD rip (or Kazaa, granted). Talk about FUD!
Just because Perry died yesterday doesn't mean you get to make up stories as you go along...COPY!
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Adam Jacob Muller said 1:13AM on 6-16-2005
~ 1000 AAC files from iTunes (Holy shit!)
~ 3400 Music MP3 files
~ 700 MP3/AAC with "podcast" genre
~ A complete, bootable install of Tiger
~ Misc File backups (the, if i loose this I will cry stuff)
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Dave said 9:10AM on 6-16-2005
Well usually mine contains about 14Gb of music (mostly ripped from my CD collection - since there's no iTMS in Australia yet to purchase songs from), and a couple of hundred Mb of work related things like cisco IOS images, firewall doco, that sort of thing.
But at the moment, it's acting as an external firewire drive so I can play around with OS X Server :)
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Hamish McKenzie-Campbell said 11:12AM on 6-16-2005
"...there are too many variables those guys didn't account for"
I'm also in Australia, and therefore am stuck without the music store. I'm also an iPod owner, and have more than enough audio on it without ever going near the store.
Anyway, the way I see it is that there isn't a link between the number of music store downloads and the number of iPods sold. For instance, there may be people, like me, who have obtained their music from CD's and records, to play back on our iPods. Alternatively, some people, such as my parents, will use the iTMS to download songs they want to listen to, without using any form of mp3 player.
Basically, there needs to be much more research into the link between the number of iPods and music store downloads.
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Dan Neuman said 1:03PM on 6-16-2005
Don't forget that not all of those 16 million iPods sold are still working. I'm on my second, and am thinking about getting my third.
Also, the people who are most able to buy iPods (grownups) are not the biggest music buyers. It's when the kids get their hands on iPods (probably from their much-badgered parents) and get credit cards or gift cards that iTMS will really grow. But they still have more time than money, and for them KaZaa is the way to go. When you have more money than time, use iTMS.
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matty said 11:56PM on 6-16-2005
I still like buying music CDs, not that I have much choice, no credit card and no itunes in my country.
Still, the 130 CDs i have don't make a huge dent on my 40G ipod. I bought it partly so I could use it as a backup drive for my iBook.
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