It’s an annual tradition. Every year at Macworld, Apple releases a smattering of stats that gives a peek at how its business is doing. At this year’s Philnote (Phil Schiller gave the speech instead of Steve Jobs), which was Apple’s last Macworld appearance, the stats were few and far between. A few morsels for the information-starved Apple faithful (and investors). But here they are:
- iTunes has now sold six billion songs (it crossed the 5 billion mark last June).
- Over 10 million different tracks are available on iTunes.
- Starting today, 8 million songs are DRM-free, and all 10 million will be DRM free by the end of March.
- There are now over 75 million accounts on iTunes linked to credit cards.
- In fiscal year 2008, Apple sold 9.7 million Macs
- Mac sales grew twice as fast as the overall PC market.
The last billion songs took about five and half months to sell, which was the same pace more or less that it took Apple to get to its fourth billion (January, 2008) and fifth billion songs (June, 2008). So iTunes sales are no longer accelerating, despite many more iPhones and iPods out there. It makes you wonder what the saturation point is for consumers buying songs from iTunes. One thing to cheer about, DRM is now officially dead (it looks like Apple traded variable pricing for getting rid of DRM), but I’m not sure that is going to spur sales much.
From my own experience, I buy a few albums when I get a new iPod, and then my purchases taper off. I’ve only purchased 139 songs from iTunes over the past five years. That comes to $28 a year. But then, I’m well past my music-buying prime. How much have you spent on iTunes?
I buy most of my music on amazon’s mp3 store. I buy apps for my phone through itunes though, if that counts.
I haven’t been in the iTunes store for a while, are all purchases still .aac? Or can you buy .mp3?
$500 in 2 years. It’s because I’m lazy.
6 billion in how many years?
Stopped buying (and downloading) when I got a Spotify account. But with DRM free I may rethink itunes purchases.
6 billion songs and 75 million customer accounts? ITunes made it! A big year-end-report number I ever came across!
- Mani
http://ExcuseMeWorld.com
I probably spend less than $100 a year, but this is good news. I purchase all of my music from iTunes despite the DRM. I am just too lazy to go elsewhere even though I know better. Good bye DRM…
as much as i enjoy the low prices that amazon has, their process isn’t as easy as itunes and often times lacks information about artists and their upcoming albums that itunes has. it’s a tradeoff.
Russian mp3 download sites for me and mainly because of DRM free… but like many have stated… I’m back to iTunes.
So, the averages, since inception, are around:
600 purchases of each song available (6B/10M)
80 songs purchased per account (6B/75M)
Something just doesn’t feel right about the numbers like like “yeah, billions” but there’s a catch somewhere…stock is dipping too.
Yeah drdrew, but the point is a few years back most of the so called experts on “free” internet predicted that charging users for music they can download for free (or steal) somewhere else would be crazy.
It is true that Apple did not make a buck on iTunes for the first three or so years, but the model survived and now others (myspace, facebook, amazon….) try desperately to follow it.
Kudos for Apple for having a vision and guts to go against the “conventional wisdom.” RIP to all those “free-is-always-better” gurus.
What about all of those ‘free’ downloads from Coke/Pepsi on iTunes. Didn’t Apple sell a billion downloads to Coke? Many, many of those ’sold’ tracks were never downloaded. I wonder percent of of the six billion sold has actually been downloaded.
I like to get it better from amazon on an mp3 format! and I have recently found this website on amazon deals, where they also show you the best deals on music and the best sellers
http://amazonbe...ling-music.html
apparantely certain days, certain music is cheaper!!
Taking out DRM is one of the best things that could have happened to iTunes. As a DJ, I’ve started buying music elsewhere due to the DRM incapatabilities with Serato and other music manipulation-ware. Only problem is that iTunes has one of the best online catalogues. Glad to be rid of it.
I buy my music from Amazon.com. I may be interested in buying from ITUNES again if they were priced equal to or lower than Amazon. Overall, though, I feel more comfortable buying from Amazon as I feel they are overall better and more trustworthy as a company.
Ever since iTunes, I don’t bother going to HMV or any other CD store to buy my music. I like the idea of only purchasing the songs I like on Itune as opposed to buying an entire CD. I guess I am one of the many who have contributed towards the 6 billion.
Apple knows ho to make life easy and simple
iTunes is spyware on my system, no thanks. I boycotted Apple products and services.
You Apple fanboy can kiss my royal oss.
Congrats TechCrunch, apparently royalty is reading your blog.
I buy all my music on http://zero-inch.com . It’s a great site offering a great selection of electronic music, which is hard to find on places like iTunes and Amazon. I also like the editorial approach these guys have as well as the possibility to discover new music by location.
This one is for music lovers and i can only recommend it to anyone who did not check it out yet.
5 out of 5!
whew, nice one! pretty impressive stock of electronic music labels and nice page design too.
I love the ‘browse by cities’ feature, never seen something like this before.
i have bought songs worth 200 dollars from itunes……but that was cuz i got a gift card. i dont have an ipod so i listen to the songs on my desktop mostly……but i think buying songs from itunes is a rip off and is totally not worth it
SO “applelover” has no ipod and thinks itunes is a ripoff?
Fail…
$1. I bought one song (Spacehog’s “In the Meantime”) and then discovered BitTorrent.
Aren’t you worried about the quality of your music from such places? Illegal downloads usually sound like horse shit. This is one advantage the music labels still have.
There are some music-specific torrent sites out there that have vast catalogs. They also offer full albums in various formats and bitrates. Puts iTunes and Amazon to shame.
One more thing (as they say at MacWorld) — stop using the word “illegal” in place of copyright infringement. It only gives those Patriot Act Nazis the ability to control us even more.
Some interesting stats. Don’t think I have ever bought any tracks. I continue to stick with CD, at least till someone offers lossless downloads.
And DRM keeps me away from video as I have things like a PS3 that needs to be able to play them.
My kids got about $200 in iTunes GCs this Christmas from various friends and relatives, and they’ll have those spent before next christmas.
I buy for around $20-50 a month…
iTunes is crap I don’t understand why so many people like it.
And nobody will even give you a damn try to make you understand
When Photoshop runs faster than iTunes, you know Apple did a crap job on it for Windows. Probably on purpose.
“Photoshop runs faster than iTunes…on Windows”
You may want to update iTunes
http://apple.co...tunes/download/
Considering Apple has 350+ Million installs of iTunes on Windows, I doubt they intentionally are doing a “crap job…on purpose”. Undermining their stock price isn’t one of their Windows strategies.
$0
And not because I download illegally. I still buy the physical copy of the rare album I want and rip it to iTunes. Therefore great audio quality and it’s always mine.
I imagine the itunes will be free someday – as music once was.
http://www.topt...stprep.com/blog
I love how no one uses Facebook Connect. What a poopy idea.
Yeah, it’s funny how people don’t like to use Facebook connect. It’s like a sale, it goes good for one day, then it falters off the next, and forgotten forever.
Facebook Connect is on a death spiral.
I love how no one uses Facebook Connect. What a poopy idea.
about $300/year since 2004
iTunes is the best application to acquire any type of media. Could it be better? Yes, and I suspect we’ll see an overhaul of the iTunes Store in the text 18 months.
I use mTraks.com which is an indie music mp3 subscription site. 30 no-drm songs for $9.99 baby! YEah!
Live Strong by Babby…New Song Listen!!!
http://www.yout...h?v=_LO1eE-G8xQ