[opendtv] Re: News: Apple Sells 70 Million Songs in First Year ofiTunes Service
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 12:48:44 -0400
At 10:27 PM -0700 4/30/04, John Willkie wrote:
>
>and, only lost about $0.10 per title sold, so they lost $7 million on sales
>of $70 million. And, this is an improvement?
This is the kind of disinformation we have come to expect from you John..
Given start-up costs, including marketing expenses that are typically
high in the first year, the iTunes service managed to turn profitable
after only 9 months.
Regards
Craig
Apple's iTunes Turned
Profit in Recent Quarter
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
April 28, 2004 10:34 p.m.
Apple Computer Inc. said its iTunes Music Store, a pioneering legal
music-download service, sold more than 70 million songs in its first
year of operation and that it also recorded a small profit for the
quarter ended in March.
Despite the Cupertino, Calif., computer maker missing its own
12-month forecast of having 100 million songs sold by the end of
April, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said he still believed iTunes
made an impressive showing. Apple said it is currently selling 2.7
million songs a week.
"I think the growth rate has been phenomenal," Mr. Jobs said during a
conference call. "We're pretty excited about this."
The company also announced a new version of the store, which includes
features such as the capability for users to post the playlists of
their favorite songs on the site and the ability to purchase music
videos from the store.
In addition, Apple changed some rules about usage of the songs,
increasing the number of computers that a song downloaded from iTunes
could play on to five from three. At the same time, Apple said it was
also reducing the number of times that the same music playlist could
be burned onto a compact disc to seven times, down from 10. Mr. Jobs
said he was making that change at the request of the music labels,
which have been concerned about the impact of CD burning and
downloading on CD sales.
Apple will continue to focus on music for its iPod portable music
player, and will resist adding other components such as video to the
device. "It's the music, stupid," Mr. Jobs joked. "We're staying
focused on the fact that people are buying these devices to listen to
music."
Mr. Jobs stressed that songs sold from iTunes will remain 99 cents
each. The store does offer albums for $9.99 or less, and Mr. Jobs
said that almost half the songs sold are through album sales. There
are no plans to change the pricing structure, he said.
Rivals such as RealNetworks Inc. and Musicmatch Inc. have publicly
called for Apple to make changes to both music sold on iTunes and its
iPod devices that allow for more open access. Songs purchased from
iTunes can't be played in most portable music players, though they
can be burned onto a compact disc.
--Wall Street Journal staff reporter Pui-Wing Tam and Dow Jones
Newswires reporter Roger Cheng contributed to this article.
Write to the Online Journal's editors at newseditors@xxxxxxx
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