Filed under: iTS, iTunes, Apple
4 million iTunes songs disappear, speculations abound
Last week, Apple's iTunes Store turned 5 years old. Now the blogosphere is buzzing with the fact that Apple said they had over "10 million" songs in their library, then later changed the page to say "6 million." That's a difference of 4 million songs unaccounted for. MacNN did the math and said that if they had 10 million songs, it would have accounted for a 66% increase in their catalog in only a month. MacNN has before and after pictures of the iTunes Store page showing the changes. So... typo? Or is Apple doing some weird shuffling of their library?
[via MacNN]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
David Chartier said 3:22PM on 5-04-2008
Typo. I highly doubt there's anything to see here folks. Move along.
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blinkcowz182 said 3:37PM on 5-04-2008
Or maybe Apple's record label is about to launch and those 4 million songs were from pissed off record labels who are trying to destroy iTunes and Apple and take over the world?! Eh yeah probably just a typo.
Travis said 3:35PM on 5-04-2008
I guess Steve Jobs wasn't using Time Machine.
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W1nn370µ |{0$£0w$|{1 said 3:39PM on 5-04-2008
You gotta shrink your library from time to time with so much warez these days. Every iTunes-User knows this.
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totoro said 3:39PM on 5-04-2008
Are you saying that the 10 million claim has been around for a while, and recently was downgraded to 6 million? Or was the 10 million claim just for a couple days/weeks?
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Ralph said 3:39PM on 5-04-2008
Someone on the linked site said maybe 10 million is worldwide and 6 million is US. Not too far of a stretch, as there's a lot of iTunes Stores and some may be country-exclusive.
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David said 3:42PM on 5-04-2008
Maybe it is 10 million songs but.....like my iTunes Library, I have lots of compilations discs, and therefore duplicates? :p
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raydafunk said 3:51PM on 5-04-2008
You got me in that one.
raydafunk said 3:49PM on 5-04-2008
Well the whole ten million songs could actually still be true, here is what i think, duplicated songs. The same song could be in 10 compilations, all they see in their data base is that there are 10 more different songs in their list, what they don't know is how many times is that song duplicated. So it is really easy to cover that one up. Thats just my guess.
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David said 3:59PM on 5-04-2008
Isnt that what I jsut said?
Although I was kinda joking about it but...maybe it is possible?
John Russell said 4:00PM on 5-04-2008
It's obviously a result of the fact that the Beatles catalogue consists of four million songs. The guys at Apple simply forgot that they are still hiding them from the public.
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Sabi said 4:36PM on 5-04-2008
*sniff*
I smell sarcasm
*sniff*
RobK said 4:33PM on 5-04-2008
Someone should sue Apple for false and misleading advertising....
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Derek said 6:57PM on 5-04-2008
Why? It isn't a subscription based service, if the music they want isn't there, they don't buy anything. They haven't lost anything.
artifex said 11:13PM on 5-04-2008
Yes, we need another idiot to laugh at.
Doug Adams said 4:54PM on 5-04-2008
10 million world-wide, 6 million US. *yawn* Ping me if some important news develops.
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josh said 5:09PM on 5-04-2008
will do, doug :/
Scotty said 6:15PM on 5-04-2008
i know why...
it's cause those extra 4 million songs are exclusively for the 3G iPhone, about to be launched Down Under!
Apple has just discovered there are a few other countries in the world, outside America.
next... prices around the world will reflect similarly with US store.
...pigs might fly too
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table said 6:23PM on 5-04-2008
Referencing MacNN by citing their journalistic findings on the results of 4-divided-by-6 was a bit condescending.
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Rob said 7:14PM on 5-04-2008
How many songs did the Beatles write exactly....? ;0)
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