On declining iTunes Store sales

Well I for one stopped buying from ITMS when it stopped accepting purchases from iTunes v5 (for JHymn). I'm just not gonna pay to put up with DRM on my files. If I can remove the DRM, then yes, I really like buying bunches of individual tracks that I like. That's quite nice, and far more convenient than buying whole CDs. But if there's no way to remove the DRM .. then I'm just not gonna mess with it. It's CDs, or other means, at that point.. Sorry Apple. *shrug* Your DRM is losing you money from me. :

As the author of one of the rebuttals to the Forrester article, I have to agree with most of the comments here. And you can compare Josh's outlook with mine graphically at

http://www.blackfriarsinc.com/blog/2006/12/looking-at-forresters-side-of-itunes.html

Comment #9 is particularly important, in my opinion. The bigger iTunes gets, the more it looks like a regular retailer, and therefore you have to look at complete years, not seven month segments. Measuring without the Christmas peak just isn't representative of the actual business being done by Apple.

Oh look, after reading my comment (#2), look at this that came up in my RSS reader a few minutes ago:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/12/13/itunes.sales.growth/

Headline - iTunes Sales Show Strong Growth Trend

Wouldn't you know, the stock dipped, and now it's recovering, just like I figured it would. It happens all the time and online media outlets help it along because they are too blind and inexperienced to see when they are getting played.

Why not December to December? January's sales figures would have been grossly inflated because of the millions of people buying songs for their brand-new Christmas iPods.

I'd think that *every* month would be a decline from January's sales figures -- any growth over a January number is real growth indeed.

Maybe after that guy got divorced from his wife for purchasing $40,000 in iTunes songs in one month, he gave it up cold turkey and now the iTS is showing a loss.

I don't quite understand why credit card companies would review online music stores in the first place. Obviously they're trying to find something bad if this is the case.

Either way, I don't really trust it. I also don't think Paypal charges and Gift Cards make up "65% losses." I'll believe Steve with his numbers of sneaky credit card companies any day.

Fishes,
narco.

"Geoff also mentions something called 'blanket licensing' where said jackass labels could apply a tax to broadband subscriptions [...]"

"Tax" is a popular word with corporations that want money because it makes consumers feel something's mandatory. But only governments can tax, and legislation has to be passed.

If the RIAA is making deals with broadband ISPs, it's for fees, not taxes. And strictly speaking, there has to be a mechanism by which consumers can opt out of paying the fee; despite the RIAA's fervent, sweaty nightmares, not everyone downloads music.

It's not true. It's rampant mis-reporting by The Register which was then picked up and repeated ad nausiam by other outlets who hadn't read the report themselves.
Check the author's blog if you don't believe me...

http://forrester.typepad.com/devicesmedia/

And here's Forrester's own chart of ongoing sales of iTunes and iPods. Don't see any 65% drop here...

http://blogs.forrester.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/itunes_and_ipods_1.jpg

part of the reason - the store isn't working! it wouldn't accept any of my credit cards last night because the security code was "wrong." it wasn't!

RE:
Also, what the hell is a "paper-thin profit loss-leader?" :p

iTMS was always a vehicle to sell the iPod experience.


With the addition of Movies (Cars sold like 5 million copies ) and all the TV shows, etc., etc. I find it hard to believe that the profits are plummeting?

I personally slowed down as I've pretty much got all the songs I wanted to get on my iPod but still buy the odd album or song in a month ... so can see why some people have slowed down ... but for all the others recently purchasing an iPOD, and for sure after christmas, there's got to be a peak????

Better yet, lets talk about the online media as a whole pouncing on information that is, at best, speculative...

Hi, my name is Dave, I claim that Apple only sold 4 computers last quarter, could this be the end of the fruit wave? Begin speculation, bashing, and claims of "you heard it here first" and "x.com exclusive:"

Seriously, my RSS reader had nothing but "iTunes sales dropping!!!!" from literally dozens of sites that don't know jack about what they are doing (many of which are sourced here from time to time).

This is how it works... company x wants to buy up some apple stock, they see the price is too high so they do something about it... put out that there is a problem, get together some data (and mine it to make it look right - as in ONLY looking at CC and Debit card purchases) to back up their claim and release it. The result, the stock price dips, they buy in and then the stock price recovers when the company announces that it was bogus. This happens all the time, it's wrong, and the online media perpetuates the situation by speculating even more on things they don't understand.