Although the prffits directly from these sales are fairly low the service adds tons of visibility for Apple and will lead to increased sales of both iPods and Mac's. Apple has gotten a huge amount of great PR from this. It will also help them when they release the 970 Macs later this year.

Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, etc. are c***? Fascinating.

...but you would expect a spike in the beginning as "people take the service for a test drive. How will the numbers look in a month or two after the service has been around for a while and isn't quite as new and shiny? Don't get me wrong-I think this is going to contribute to the company bottom line and is a no-brainer for Apple. But I don't think at this time next year we'll be looking at sales of 300-400 million unless the iTunes for PC comes out during that time."

you sound like columnist for a peecee rag.
always cautiously pesimistic and afraid.

Once again though Apple innovates (correctly) and the other jokers endlessly following.
Besides the music industry loves Apple.

...how anything that approaches a thoughtful or a balanced perspective that in any way is less than glowing about Apple is perceived as being hostile, negative or from a PC troll. For your information Applie is quite cautious about what it does and does not blow it's money or effort on things where there is no guarantee of return. See the stories yesterday on how Microsoft is bleeding red in relative to it's XBox foray. I'd rather be cautious like Steve Jobs than to be braindead like so many Mac zealots.

Great numbers Apple!

(Don't Steal Music)

I searched for music when the service came out and bought a couple of songs, but unlike computers, I don't believe there was pent up demand for this service. It's not like anybody was holding off on purchasing CDs for the music store to come out, was it?

It was into the second week that I started exploring and buying, and buying, and buying... 66 songs so far. It takes time to change the way you think and buy songs. Just this morning, I was listening to the radio and heard a song I kinda dug, then thought, "hey, wow, I can actually look for the song on the IMS and purchase it immediately."

It takes time to change people's habits, and that simply means that usage of the store will go up, not down.

They got fischerspooner now, but I think they took off the only radiohead they had. They shouldn't be taking music off, they should be ADDING music only. :(

are taking off music (temporayly(sp)) when they find they do not have the rights to distribute that song digitally. in those cases they go back to the band / record company and add it to the contract.

NO conspiracy here folks. Move along.

What they didn't say is that they're removing music every day to make room for new music. Apple is not running this store to make money. It's a simple "come on" to sell ipods and imacs to iheads. Apple will do everything to keep their cost down(static)
There will be no Windoz version because the music companies are short-sighted, greedy and paranoid.

that apple is limiting potentcial sales because they do not want to buy another $60 80 gig drive?

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHTTTTTTT...

Stay in school buddy.

Uh, hello? I'd like to take your remark into question. Have you not seen? Wham! is available...ah thank you very much... LOL...

Hey, let's not forget its also the bandwidth of all those downloads for the music on that 80 GB harddrive. See, if they limit selection and choice, they limit the number of users, and then save money on bandwidth and customer service. See, you make money by saving money, or some such nonsense.

Speaking of that, how much of the 2M songs includes all those people who got double/triple charged because they screwed up?

Finally, who cares whether they keep up the pace, or level off at 100,000 songs a week or 50 songs a week? As someone wrote up, for a company that makes 1.4B a quarter on hardware, its hard to get excited over $3M in sales of music, much of which might end up being spent running the service (someone has to enter the ID3 tags, rip the music, that kind of thing). The point isn't so much now on revenues and profit, but marketing.

One last thing. I'd think Apple would be much better off with letting users set up accounts with deposits, then buying off of that (problem, of course, is they have to track the money, and some idiots would probably sue them because they're now a 'bank' but not following some lame banking rules). Unless they got some kind of deal with MCard and Visa, they're paying huge fees for these little .99 purchases, and a fee for each charge. They could probably save more money doing deposits and siphoning from that pool (plus, then, users are less likely to have their credit cards cleaned out through one-click computer buying. Woohoo!

Here's to hoping they add my favorite album: Yanni's Greatest Hits

You're in luck. Ultimate Yanni is available, in addition to a number of his other albums. Go nuts.

yanni yawnie yawnie yawn...Zzzzzz

I know you are just joking but you know they ain't using standard IDE drives bought off the retail shelvees.

"Speaking of that, how much of the 2M songs includes all those people who got double/triple charged because they screwed up?"

Um, 2M equals 2000.

Well, they finally put Sir Mixalot's "Baby Got Back" on there. It was a glaring omission due to the fact that the song is in a commercial for the store itself. Still no De La Soul, however. How can you have a switch ad with De La and not even sell their songs at your store? Whether Apple or De La Soul is the problem on this one its a black eye for both of them.

"Well, they finally put Sir Mixalot's "Baby Got Back" on there. It was a glaring omission due to the fact that the song is in a commercial for the store itself. Still no De La Soul, however. How can you have a switch ad with De La and not even sell their songs at your store? Whether Apple or De La Soul is the problem on this one its a black eye for both of them."

Well, unfortunately, negotiating for the rights to use a song in an ad, and putting it online for sale, are two entirely different animals. Just because you have the right for one, doesn't mean you have the right for the other. I'm sure, in time, De La Soul will be online.

Um, 2M equals 2000.

Um, no 2M means 2 million. M as in Mega. Its not M as in Roman numerals, as then you'd have to write it MM.

Who are the geniuses who post here, any way?

I know you are just joking but you know they ain't using standard IDE drives bought off the retail shelvees.

Sure, but if they're using an Xserve cluster or Raid, its just another $400 HD. Or just spend another $11000 and get a 2.5 TB setup. I sure hope they didn't set up a system that isn't easily upgradeable such that they need to throw out stuff.

Storage will never be a problem. They currently have about 210K songs in the store now, assuming an average of 4MB per song, that comes out to 840GB of storage. An XServe (standard, not raid) can accomidate 720 GB and thus a single XServe could hold most of the store's music. More likely the store is broken up across units depending on the genre or some other artist grouping that allows them to dynamically add or remove storage & processing power depending on the demand for a particular group of songs. And as for bandwidth, each song basically pays for it's own bandwidth costs, so it wouldn't hurt to add more songs. If someone is looking for a particular song and buys it, it pays for itself. No big deal.

M = thousand

mega is a prefix (as is kilo, but I won't go there)

2 mega- what bytes, bits, trons? It isn't a word

I'm 't going to say it again

lazy a** geeks, learn english

So, what, then 2MB means two thousand bytes? I thought it meant two million bytes. Oh c***! That means the iBook I was going to buy was only a measly 900 thousand hertz. Who the h*** wants that????

And, again, 2M isn't two thousand as M doesn't stand for thousand, except in the stupid a** world of Roman Numerals. And, again, if your thinking that, then you can't say 2M, because how do you put Arabic and Roman numerals in the same numbers???

the educated world still uses roman numerals

mega-what? megawatt?

two megatrons? HA!

that would be certain doom for the autobots!

I'm well impressed that the iTMS was able to maintain the "million song march" for a second week.

This gives me real hope that they will be able to maintain that average until the rollout to Canada (which should add a hundred thousand songs/week to the average), then the EU (which I think they plan to do in one fell swoop, and which should add another 500,000 songs/week), then Japan/Asia (another 100,000 songs/week) and finally Windows (which, if the Windows people will learn how to become honest, should easily add another 3 million songs/week).



4.7 million songs a week by year's end. Wow. I mean, that doesn't represent a huge profit for Apple (about $1 million/week at that level), but what it does represent is a huge new retail outlet. That number could even be exceeded if the independents and more major artists/labels really hop on board.

Okay, enough math -- back to the iTMS! Gotta buy em all! :)

world can suck my...

n e way, to clear things up, 2M is most definatly not 2k(thats read as thousand, not kilo-whats). i have almost lost track of how often i see x million read as xM. its simply a quicker way to write it. welcome to the metric world.

not megawatt, its apples new speed mesurement.

"Our new online music store can do up to 4 megatunez(MTz) a month!"

Apple reaches far more creative-types than the PC market ... I'd guess that the music purchase habits of Apple owners would be somewhat higher (more songs) than the same number of Windows users (as a group) ... Regardless, I'd love to see Apple making money from anything that runs on Windows, it is good for the company. Cash flow is also good for R&D.

h***, sherlock even provides a nice dictionary, use it.

Mega, meaning million, is a prefix (look up the word prefix, I'm not explaining it)

metric system? there isn't a big use of mega in the metric system, 1,000 kilometers is used, not 1 megameter, I've never seen a megagram

you don't have to change what you write (people don't change), you just have to know that you are wrong (and you are)

oh, and the roman numeral for million is a capital M with an overscore.

im not gonna argue this anymore (wasnt the one arguing it in the first place) but in the true technical sense of the metric system, 1000 kg/km/kl (kiloliter) would be read as 1 megagram/megameter/megaliter.

don't loose the ball on the fact that the service isn't yet available outside US... and the market is quite big outside there even without a windooze client!

grr. I am so sick of people doing this:

Quoted from some guy on page one
>Phase one: Sell music online to Macs
>Phase two:
>Phase three: Profit!

see this makes sense without a mysterious 2nd phase. Selling music to mac users can be profitable. The original situation was with the underpants gnomes stealing underware, which does not inherently make any money. No mention of sales, just underware. Now you could say this

RIAA plans to revive music industry

step 1: sabotage kazaa with trojan mp3's
step 2: ??
step 3: profit.

see. this is funny, sabotaging mp3's doesn't make any money and really isn't worth any real value, much like used underware, but yet is done as a part of a business model that is intended to result in profit.

don't loose the ball on the fact that the service isn't yet available outside US... and the market is quite big outside there even without a windooze client!

we believe the hype that there are roughly 15-18 Windows users for every 1 Mac user, then in theory when the iTunes Music store is available for Windows, we should see at least a ten-fold increase in sales.

Except that:

a. A relatively low percentage of "Windows users" are running the latest stuff, which is probably what the iTMS for Win will require; and

b. Let's face it, Windows users aren't as ethical as Mac users. Yes there are unethical Mac users too, but I'm talking percentage.

So instead of a ten-to-fifteen fold increase like we ought to see, I'm thinking we'll see more like a three-fold increase at best.

There's an upside to this, actually -- if stats can show that Mac users make up 25% of all buyers at the iTMS (once it's available widely), retailers and devs will start to realise that Mac users are disproportionate with their purchasing power relative to their marketshare and will start catering to us more because we actually BUY things rather than steal them.

:)

OK for the mega argument to work it has to be a mega-something

megatracks
megadownloads
megafiles

it all equals megadollars (def. 1a mega)

similar to saying "I have a red" (of course swapping and adjective for a prefix)

a red what?

exactly

If the songs at iTunes music store were software, with a few exceptions they would all be crapware. Amazing that Apple is getting these sales with garbage. Ahh, but of course if any cool music were put up for sale the store would go into the red....at least until they opened it up to Europeans (and I'm American, just not a brainwashed, follow thy leader, pray to Fox News and Dubya, beat on g*** and women, ect...)..

"don't loose the ball on the fact that the service isn't yet available outside US... and the market is quite big outside there even without a windooze client!"

Lucky that most hackers are non-US based and do not use OS X....

Oh, and use of "windooze" to replace "Windows" - pure stroke of comical genius. Original! Funny!

"metric system? there isn't a big use of mega in the metric system, 1,000 kilometers is used, not 1 megameter, I've never seen a megagram"

True, usually it's used for megawatts and perhaps megatons. Yep, you're right, sorry to burst the bubbles of the morons who think M equals million. It doesn't, go back and take a basic junior high school science course, and learn about UNITS. Idiots.

...you bickerers are so funny.

Now listen, I'm as keen as you are that indie labels, underground acts, small-time artists and other such obscurities should appear on the iTMS asap.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that the present lineup of iTMS is all c***. Anybody who wants to call Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Judy Garland, Duke Elllington, Muddy Waters, DJ Shadow, Kraftwerk, Van Morrison, Andy Summers and Lena Horne "garbage" can just step outside.

While you wait for your favourite "indie rock" band to join in the fun, why not take the opportunity to discover how much really great music is out there that you've never really listened to? Genres you've never really explored (like blues for example), or artists you always meant to find out more about? Use the browse button and educate yourself a little while you wait. Can't hurt, might help.

Worldwide mac users would benefit from the iTunes Music Store
but I still don't see the purpose of it on the pc.

Windows users already enjoy a gigantic library of software
so why should Apple offer them another?

Perhaps it would be good for business. But once a product comes out on another system with a larger user base, user's can't justify getting for example, a mac.

Apple's marketshare will continue to grow and we'll see more commercials for the iTunes Music Store.

If it does come out for the pc it should look like a win xp app
but be easy. If they want more features they upgrade for $20
done and done.

What the h*** is a jiggawatt?!?!?

I don't agree with that at all. Apple's got a great opportunity here. If Apple wants to use this to generate growth, they better put it on the PC, and do it as fast as possible. The idea that keeping iTunes Mac-only to increase hardware sales is just fantasy Mac user elitism.

If Apple doesn't do it, someone else (read: MS, Real) will copy their model. In particular, if MS gets there before Apple and bundles it with Windows Media Player, game over. 95% of the world will be downloading music without iTunes. The rest will be sniffing about how the experience is better on a Mac, while trying to figure out why the other 95% won't run out and buy a new computer and learn a new OS just to download music.

Increasing sales by tying all your products together doesn't work, unless you already have huge market share. Apple can increase sales by making quality products and GETTING THE PRODUCTS TO THE PEOPLE, thus enhancing their overall reputation. If Apple gets this out on the PC fast enough, I bet this will really boost iPod sales--and notice there's no forced tie between hardware and software there. Now you'll have Windows users with two Apple products, and possibly seeing the Mac platform as something besides slow, expensive, and closed-off.

And charging for iTunes on Windows would be a terrible, terrible mistake. Apple is already making money from downloads. Charging $39.95, $20, or anything else is a barrier to downloading music for potentially millions of users who feel they shouldn't have to pay for the privilege of paying for songs. Doing that would also enhance Apple's pricey image. Just keep it free and rake in the dough from the downloads.

to the guy above (no, not God...I mean the poster above) - you're right on. Apple needs to get iTunes on the PC IMMEDIATELY (can't believe they haven't done it yet). The futute of ACC and the open-standards mpeg-4 are at stake. MS wants to have all media in their proprietary Windows Media formats so that they can control rights and distribution (for movies and audio). Mpeg-4 stands in their way. iTunes for Windows combined with the iTMS will make serious inroads for ACC/mpeg-4, but it has to get out there IMMEDIATELY.

iTunes is still better than any other major media player on the PC. I know...I have several PCs and a PC iPod, and there's still nothing like iTunes and the iTMS.

This is serious crunch time for Apple...every day lost is crucial and costly.

yes, of course ms will steal the idea, tie it into windows, say they invented it, people will believe them... it's the same old story. how in the h*** did a company that has no vision, no ability to create, to innovation, ever get so dominant? proabaly the same reason spam is profitable, people are just plain stupid.

christopher lloyd.... comedy

gigawatt, sounds funnier when he says jigawatt though

Finally after firewire, and ipod, something I can proudly proclaim to windoze zealots who claims Apple is down and out.

Great numbers and a great way to promote and convert. But a year is still too long, we need the windows version now while it is still hot. What's stopping microsoft or other companies to come up with the same service.Think of all the potentials Apple will miss once that happens.

Majority of computers users won't recommend Apple because they are satisfied with windows platform, media player, and moviemaker.

I was sitting in a colleagues' office upgrading him to Microsoft Streets & Trips 2003, when he was telling me about how stealing music was getting more difficult, yet his sons were able to still get it. I told him that I haven't stolen any songs since the iTunes Music Store opened up. He said, "Yeah, that's that new Microsoft website for 99 cents a song. I saw that on TV."

I just sighed. I don't think in the Windows world people even know what an Apple Computer / the Apple brand is anymore.

If Apple cannot sell hardware to 90% of computer users, because they already invested on a pc, at least make those wintel boxes constantly display the Apple logo, (the way yahoo toolbars vandalizes internet explorer.) Eventually they'll appreciate Apple and next time (more or less within 5 years)dump their pc for a new iMac or G4.