After just over four years, the addition of movies and TV shows, and a name change, Apple today announced that the iTunes Store has sold over three billion songs. With a catalog of over five million songs, 550 TV shows and 500 movies, these sales numbers have also propelled the iTunes Store past Amazon and even Target to become the third largest music retailer in the US.While this is great news and all, I'm getting a bit bothered by the fact that music is gaining more and more of the bragging rights from Apple lately. TV shows seem to be selling pretty well, but just seeing '500 movies' printed in this press release makes the iTunes Store's selection sound like it's about on par with that crappy rental department at that run-down grocery store up the street. Hollywood typically seems happy to hop on any and every bandwagon that rolls into town, and with the reportedly unprecedented profits that record labels and TV show networks make from digital downloads, it still baffles me as to why the iTunes Store isn't able to give Blockbuster and Netflix a run for their money.
Still, three billion songs sold over the world's most popular (and still most DRM-flexible) digital music store is good news, so I tip my hat to Apple on the success of the little jukebox application that could.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-31-2007 @ 11:10AM
Bruno said...
Lack of sufficient DRM is the reason you don't see more movies in iTunes. HD releases are waiting on HDCP in Apple's playback devices (their new monitors already support it).
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7-31-2007 @ 11:21AM
daniel said...
Record labels don't make 'unprecedented profits' from sales on iTunes. The article you linked to is only about what TV studios receive. Bear in mind that TV shows still get purchased by networks and generate advertising revenue (as they always have), so the iTunes income is indeed incremental. But this is clearly not the case for the music industry. The vast majority of music industry costs are in marketing and A&R - distribution was only ever a small part of that. And with digital downloads, the labels now sell tracks for 99c (of which they receive about 70c), when before they were selling albums for $15 (of which they received $10-12). That is why the music industry continues to suffer, as CD sales decline and digital sales, while increasing, only make up a part of that shortfall. I'm not saying that you should have any great sympathy for the labels, but it's better to get your facts straight!
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7-31-2007 @ 11:27AM
Jonathan Allen said...
what, no competition for the 3 billionth download?
Dang. I wanted every mac ever made and 100,000 song credit to iTunes.
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7-31-2007 @ 11:50AM
Eric said...
The reason movies aren't selling, is, I imagine, because people are like me.
I like the idea of buying a movie and instantly having it, but I don't want to be limited to just my computer or iPod.
I'd like to be able to take my DVD, go to someone else's house, and watch it there. I could always bring my iPod and hook it up, but that's an awful lot of work. It's worth the extra $5 because I get the physical disc (which I can always convert for iPod, if I feel like it), and I get all the bonus features.
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7-31-2007 @ 11:57AM
Duscrom said...
I like iTunes, especially being a recent mac convert.. But, I'm in the camp that wishes i had more options. At last with Microsoft, I have more of the MS product line. So if I buy into the Urge/Zune Marketplace world, i have more options for players, and have me a good media center extender w/ the Xbox 360. But i have no plans for an iPod, nor Apple TV.
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7-31-2007 @ 12:18PM
bibi-pov said...
Well, for starter, there are stores for pretty much each and every developed country, and they all sell music. But only the US store sells film and/or TV shows. I'd happily buy some TV shows if I could, but not living in the US forbids me to do so. And as far as movies are concerned, maybe if the resolution they sell them at was the same as DVD, it would be more interesting. But with a price barely lower than a physical disk (and that's for recent release) and a resolution of just 640x480 (with black bars), it's really bad. I remember having seen Pirates of Caribbean on a big Sony LCD while testing an AppleTV at the 5th av. Apple store and there was nothing to brag about! I guess once they correct those two problems, there's a real potential for success. The technology's here, but, as usual, the problem lies in the content providers...
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7-31-2007 @ 12:57PM
orig_club_soda said...
Apple and iTunes are going out of business. No one wants to buy DRM...
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7-31-2007 @ 5:32PM
pentumforever said...
#7
Ever heard of iTunes plus?
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7-31-2007 @ 5:43PM
Phil said...
I used to be a very collector minded consumer. I wanted to own physical versions of everything I liked. The iPod changed that for me, and not just for music. Owning a physical DVD or CD seems so antiquated now that I can never imagine buying a Blu-Ray or HD DVD movie ever. I'm quite satisfied with waiting the day for a NetFlix movie to arrive or the few hours it takes to download a movie to my Tivo from Amazon Unbox.
I don't need iTunes to sell HD quality movies but I wouldn't mind if they'd at least start renting DVD quality (or close enough) quality movies.
Congrats to iTunes though, an amazing thing that Apple has done, I still remember the first day the store was available and looking for anything to buy just so I could buy something the first day.
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