Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, iTunes, Apple
NYTimes: 22 Songs Per iPod
The New York Times revealed this morning that iTunes sales only account for about twenty two songs per iPod. The rest, presumably, are ripped from the owner's collection of CDs or are obtained from various other--presumably both legal and nefarious--sources.
I'm not sure what the big deal is about this. A $22 accessory sale on top of the original iPod price seems like a nice bonus to me from a financial point of view. And the "analysis" of this trend? "IPods are not sitting around generating dozens and dozens of transactions every quarter. People buy a certain number of songs, and then they stop," the Times quotes analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research.
I think more likely that some iPod people are iTunes buyers and many more are not. There are many legal ways to fill your iPod with content and I'm guessing that purchasing physical CDs and then ripping them is still the way of choice, even in a world of easy intangible purchases.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Thomas said 1:17PM on 12-11-2006
The thing is, any iPod owner should go the the store just to get the free songs, you may or may not like them but they're free. I have way more than 22 just from free songs.
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Gunesh Raj said 9:43AM on 12-11-2006
I dont think its accurate to a degree, It sounds like Ipod owners prefer ripping CDs etc than buying legal music.
I have a nano & Im from Asia, theres no way for me purchase online music from ITunes without getting gift cards & not many know about this anyway.
Asians spend alot on music, legally & illegally & Itunes availability in asia would make a difference.
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LD said 9:46AM on 12-11-2006
My non-techie friends are a mix. Some buy from iTunes, some still buy CDs. I've noticed more of them buy physical CDs and rip them. I'm guessing because they can pop the CD in their car or home stereo and the iPod is just the MP3 player, not their main source of music.
I buy physical CDs almost exclusively. The price is almost the same it seems between a CD or the whole album on iTunes. For the money I'd prefer to have a "backup" in the form of the physical CD. Also, there are often extras with CDs. I recently purchased a CD for $9.99 from Best Buy with an exclusive DVD. The same album was the same price on iTunes only saddled with DRM and no extra content or physical backup.
I think the DRM is what turns more people off from buying iTunes in larger quantities. It's too confusing for non-techies (and techies sometimes too).
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Maimon Mons said 9:47AM on 12-11-2006
I completely agree. My father and sister-in-law have had ipods for over a year. I just got mine a month ago. None of us ever bought music online. We're quite happy ripping our music from CDs (Made so easy by the itunes interface).
My father, who never used his computer except for email, has personally ripped a couple hundred CDs so far (at least). None of which are available on any music store that we know about (mostly Indian classical music and old movie tunes).
I've bought a few CDs since getting my ipod, but have no interest in buying any music online (regardless of price). CDs are cheap, easy to rip, and permanent.
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Joe Coughlin said 9:53AM on 12-11-2006
Many iPod users have more than one iPod and presumably they'd only purchase their music once on iTunes. Does this also count all Shuffles as an iPod? Certainly they're less likely to generate iTunes sales. Does it include obsolete or broken iPods?
It just looks like someone divided the number of iPods sold by the number of songs sold and came up with 22. If that's how they did it, I don't think it was the best way to track sales.
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Jon said 10:06AM on 12-11-2006
Before MP3 players came out, people *gasp* owned CDs that they still own to this day. They're not going to repurchase their entire collection in digital format (although the RIAA would probably like them to, I'd imagine).
Plus it's cheaper if you buy CDs because you can then sell them on eBay afterwards and get half your money back ;)
The analyst who wrote this clearly knows nothing about statistics. He just took the number of iPods sold and divided it by the number of iTunes songs sold. He's just trying to stoke up the fire that that Universal exec created by saying that all iPod users are pirates. I'm sure there are lots of people who bought an iPod purely for audiobooks and podcasts, with no intention of putting any music on it. I personally have about 4000 iTunes purchased songs, which is a far cry from 22.
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Tim O'Connor said 10:07AM on 12-11-2006
I can only speak for myself, but I've noticed my ITS purchases have drastically dropped off over the course of the last year and a half or so. There are two really obvious reasons for this, in my opinion:
1) My ITS purchases are extremely front loaded because when I first signed up for an account I spent a load of money buying all of the old tracks that I didn't yet have in digital format. Now that I have all of those tracks I only buy new releases.
2) I get the vast majority of my new music from emusic.com and only download from the iTunes store files that are unavailable on emusic.
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Simon said 10:10AM on 12-11-2006
I have bought 448 songs since the Itunes Canada store opened. I only buy "CDs" if the artist is not on itunes.
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Andy W said 10:21AM on 12-11-2006
I buy a combination of CDs, iTunes (tracks and albums) and 20 odd tracks a month via an eMusic subscription.
The only 'pirated' stuff I have--which is no more than a 50 songs in 6500--are individual tracks that have proven to be impossible to get elsewhere legally, usually because the album or single is out of print and the track has proved impossible to get second-hand. And I'd say a good 95% of *those* 'pirated' tracks are legal in the sense that they are in my record collection on vinyl, but I can't rip them from that source as I don't have a deck anymore.
If I *do* manage to find one of these tracks for legal download I'll re-buy it from there, and have done that in the past.
My goal is 100% legal, even if that means re-buying tracks I already have on old tapes or on vinyl, assuming I can even find the tracks, either without DRM of with DRM that is iTunes compatible.
But I'd say 85% of my collection is CD because of the lack of DRM.
If the record companies were to make 100% of their material available to buy via iTunes (or another source), with no DRM in a lossless format, I'd have no illegal stuff at all, as I'd do the right thing and replace those few tracks I do have.
There are 'illegal' tracks in my collection that I'd love to replace with a fully legal and pristine copy, but the only source is a Windows-media-tied DRM'd version, which is useless to me, and thus costs the record company that sale.
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Diarmuid said 10:25AM on 12-11-2006
A similar story/figures came out in the UK during the summer. What the story failed to mention was that the UK physical CD market was worth (approx) £120m a year. Which workes out 2-3 CDs a year per person. And with an 'average' CD having 10 tracks... well that's 20-30 tracks are year are purchase on CD. So for a newer medium iPods could be said to be holding their own. And I'm guessing many of those who bought from iTunes bought physical CDs as well.
So perhaps the 'real' story is that iPod users buy double the music!
(This of course is all back-of-a-fag-packet calculations - so feel free to drive trucks through the holes in my argument:-)
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Edward C said 10:42AM on 12-15-2006
Can TUAW put a new post about this story being incorrect or add some comment to the news.
67 Million ipod sold worldwide. Is that for 2006 only or total sales since first one came out?
If total sales then what about those who upgrade their ipod or have 2 or three ipod at home?
And if you count in those people who live in a country without itunes services....
These 2 point add up would properly cut the figure by half. Add in those who use shuffle are generally more incline to put / have music from there own collection.
You will see the figure to be something like 50 songs per ipod buyer!.
And since ITMS you buy individual songs / not a whole album with 10 songs in it. People are buying 50 GOOD songs from ITMS. ( Assuming you have some CDs collection which have most of songs you like ). I think 50 songs is a very good figure for digital music.
And it is time we put this up. Becoz i am getting pissed at M$ and Universal calling ipod buyer privates!.
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iMatt said 10:54AM on 12-11-2006
A year or so ago, I recall seeing statistics indicating that there were about 10 iTunes songs per iPod. If my memory is correct (I think it is), then the iTunes songs per iPod have *doubled* in the past year or so, which is exceptional, since the number of iPods has been growing also.
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iMatt said 10:55AM on 12-11-2006
So my point here is that any story suggesting that iTunes downloads are stagnant and not growing is not convincing.
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Jason said 11:08AM on 12-11-2006
I'd say when I first bought my ipods, I was buying a tremendous amount of music; 2-3 albums per month plus tons of singles, and when the pepsi promo came out I was in heaven. However as of late, I've bought only a tv show here or there. A few of my albums are cd's that I ripped, but currently the majority are from torrents...
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Stephen Griffith said 11:05AM on 12-11-2006
I've purchased about400 songs out of a total of 27,000. The bulk of my collection came from ripping my CDs. Now I'm in the laborious process of transferring my LPs to MP3.
If I could just figure out how to transfer my laserdisc collection to ipod video.
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derek said 11:13AM on 12-11-2006
You know, even after that stupid Wii post, you are still my favorite TUAW blogger. Most of your posts are funny and interesting. And thats good, since you are pretty much the only one that posts.
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Mikek said 11:13AM on 12-11-2006
OK so maybe I'm an idiot. I have 4663 items in my iTunes Library. 1028 have been D/L's from iTunes the rest are from my music collection prior to getting my iPod(s) I'm on my 2nd. I have not purchased a single CD since the iTMS opened. That means that 22% of my music collection was purchased from iTunes and that 22% was purchased in the last five years. I'm 43 years old. Sony, Universal, RIAA Pay Attention! My iPod made music accessible again.
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Maimon Mons said 11:21AM on 12-11-2006
Speaking about legal versus illegal tracks, my dad has absolutely zero illegal music. He goes to the store and buys everything he's interested in. He (inexplicably) has a couple illegal movies that he downloaded, however.
Interestingly enough, those illegal movies are all stuff that came out > 40 years ago and not available in the U.S. in any form.
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shawnpetriw said 12:19PM on 12-11-2006
Like just about every other iPod owner, my life didn't begin five years ago with the release of the first iPod.
No, I've had a much longer life than that, and have collected a soundtrack to go along with it.
Much of that soundtrack was vinyl, and then tape. But a lot of it is in a digital format called compact disk.
I still listen to much of that music, but I like the way iTunes organizes it, and I like to listen to it on my iPod.
It does't take the brains of an anylist or the investigativelness of a reporter to realize most of my music will be ripped from my legacy library. It's about as obvius as gravity. But much of my current music purchases are from the iTunes Store.
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Trainwrecka said 12:31PM on 12-11-2006
just dropped $40 for music at the iTunes store over the weekend. the weekend before that about $10 for tv shows. owned my ipod since 2004.
i'm too scared to check my purchase history... i don't want to cringe at all the money i have spent in apple's musical world.
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