iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download

SirWraith writes "In case anyone hasn't realized Apple has had a counter going up to a billion for a few weeks now. Apparently last night, they hit the mark. From ABC News: 'Apple says Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Mich., was the lucky audiophile who downloaded "Speed of Sound" by Brit pop band Coldplay, giving the Cupertino, Calif., company bragging rights to the 10-figure milestone. Thanks to a generous prize package from Apple, Ostrovsky will now use a $10,000 iTunes music card to keep those downloads flowing on his new 20-inch iMac computer, and listen to his favorite tunes on one of the 10 60GB iPods.'"

Re:The RIAA was right

[garcia]

Downloadable music isn't a viable music model.

It's not, for them, they aren't 100% in charge of how much Apple charges for the music. Steve is fighting the conglomorates to keep the prices on iTMS low. They want to raise the prices. Because they can't do as they wish it's not viable.

Re:Audiophile?

[guytoronto]

Some audiophiles aren't pretentious little dweebs. Vinyl is dead. Deal with it.

Re:Lotta loot

[hcdejong]

It's 99 cents, not 0.99 cents.

990M is a nice bit of income, but most of it [1] is paid out again. Apple doesn't say how profitable the iTMS is, just that it's "above even".

1: 10% of the cost of a song goes to the artist, 55% to the record company. Artists who do business with Apple directly, get 70%. Most of the remainder pays for the hardware and bandwidth.
Rumor has it that Apple's profit is 8%, or $80M after 1 Gsongs.

Re:Lotta loot

[sleeper0]

while true at one point, not true anymore. Apple makes a modest profit on the majority of content they sell via itms

999,899,994 Ashlee Simpson & Cold Play...

[bodland]

Everyone else - 100,000

Soul Amp (My Band) 6

Actually I am stoked about iTunes/Mp3 and iPods....as a indie musician, self producing with a home grown label, iTunes allows us to collect 65 cents per song. Direct to the the band...

Unfortunately without the big money for PR and payola (yes Apple probably takes payola too...despite claims otherwise, I think they call them marketing fees or "services") We are relegated to being just 13 songs in a sea of millions. Thus sales have been slow. But...that can change in a heartbeat as anyone who listens to music can see.

So...feel free to scope iTunes and search for Soul Amp...I need another guitar amplifier (VOX Ac-30 or Matchless) and a leslie for our 1958 Hammond M3 organ.

Also for people who refuse to pay for music until guilt finally takes hold after scamming every song ever recorded, we have tracks of tunes we are working on for our next disk on our website. Hep yer self...I say whay wait until a rash breaks out from the guilt of free downloading...by indie music from iTunes. The bands actually get the bulk of the money. 65 cents of 99 is pretty damn good. Most bands that get mp3 blogged are on iTunes.

http://soul-amp.com/ [soul-amp.com]

Do they included refunded purchases in that total?

[sjonke]

I recently made a series of unsatisfying purchases from iTMS. First it was the album "Winters Pageant" by The Softies. Most of the album was fine, but the first track was messed up, having a 1/2 second or so blank spot shortly after the song started. I tried playing the track on multiple computers and my vPod and they all showed it. I complained to them, and to their credit they not only refunded me for that one track, but for the entire album purchase. So I can't complain in that regard, but ultimately I just want that track intact. They told me not to buy the track again for 4 to 6 weeks so they'd have time to fix it. I allowed more than 2 months to pass and bought the track again, and it still had the same problem. I complained again and again they refunded my purchase (this time just for the one track as that is all I purchased.) As far as the refunds are concerned that was fine, but what I really wanted was track 1 intact. I don't think I'm going to try buying the track again from iTMS, only to perhaps once again find it is messed up and again having to request a refund. They seem unwilling, or unable, to tell me when the track has been fixed.

So instead I used the original album refund to buy a different album, Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea". This is a great album, and there were no such technical problems with the tracks, but, my god, is this album ever ruined by the inability of iTunes and the iPod to play the songs without gaps! Like no other. There are numerous seamless transitions between songs. At least they are suppose to be seamless. When listening to the iTMS versions you get heart-stopping gaps. Setting a 0 second crossfade slightly helps, but not much, and the iPod can't even do that. Unlike had I purchased a CD, I couldn't use the "Join CD Tracks" feature of iTunes to join my iTMS purchased tracks as a means to get around this issue. Again I complained and requested a refund. I requested that they give me my cash back, as opposed to crediting my account, because I wanted to buy the album on CD now, but they didn't do that and instead just credited my iTMS account for the album. I ended up then using the credit to buy an album that I knew didn't have seamless transitions between tracks, and I'm basically happy with that purchase, so all is well in that regard. I also then ordered a copy of the CD of "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" from an online store and happily used the "Join CD Tracks" feature of iTunes to join tracks 1-2, 4-5, 6-8 and 9-11, so those seamless transitions would be intact. Now I've got the album in a form that plays like it is suppose to in iTunes and on my iPod, something iTMS is completely incapable of.

So, Apple treated me fine, but I'm completely turned off to iTMS unless I can be sure the album does not have seamless transitions between tracks. Even then, I'm wary of the possibility that one or more of the tracks may be messed up, and that Apple wouldn't fix them, or at least that it is not possible for me to know if and when they fixed them.

Re:Audiophile?

[middlemen]

Maybe the word should be podiophile !?