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iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download 214

Posted by CowboyNeal from the hitting-the-bigtime dept.
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.'"
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iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download More

iTunes Music Store hits Billionth Download

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  • what a scam (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yahweh Doesn't Exist ( 906833 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @08:42AM (#14791820)
    $10,000 / $0.99 = 10,101.01, so he's going to have to pay $0.98 of his OWN MONEY if he wants to actually claim that .01 of a song.

    DON'T BELIEVE APPLE, if they offer you $10,000 open your eyes and see it's a SCAM to get YOUR MONEY!
    • Seriously, that is not a troll.
    • It works out even worse, when you think about the capacity of the devices they've given him:

      10,102 (paying the 98c) songs ~= 40,408 GB of music.

      They, however, have given him 10 x 60GB players. That great gift card won't even fill one of them. He'll have to drop another five grand of his own money at the rate the iTunes music store charges just to fill one of them.

      Then, with another $15,000 / player for the other 9 players... Apple have given him the gift that keeps on giving [back to them], needing a total
    • Obviously. You had to pay them the $0.99 in the first place to win the thing too! WTF? I'd think eBaying the card for about $8k or so would be a better idea - you get spendable-anywhere cash, they get a discount but still have to pay that extra ninety-eight cents.

  • 40 Year Old Virgin (Score:4, Funny)

    by sgant ( 178166 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @08:43AM (#14791823) Homepage Journal
    This leaps to mind when I found out that the Billionth song was a Coldplay song:

    David: You know how I know that you're gay?
    Cal: How? Cuz you're gay? and you can tell who other gay people are.
    David: You know how I know you're gay?
    Cal: How?
    David: You like Coldplay.
    • It would have been something REALLY embarrassing. Like a Britney song. Or some of that American Idle (no typo) crap.

      Or imagine him DLing some Boyband junk. Or Tokyo Hotel. Oh, the ways of f..ing up when DLing music today are so numerous, you could get ridiculed for pretty much anything there is in the charts today.

      At least by me! :)
      • Who *really* cares what you (or anyone else, for that matter) has to say about what someone downloads?

        I'm gunna keep downloading the tracks I like, no matter who "performs" them, whether you like it or not.

        Snob.

      • No kidding... I've always wondered about that too. What if the guy had downloaded The Shaggs song My Pal Foot Foot? [shaggs.com]
         
      • Heh heh heh. Instead of "idol," he writes "idle." Now that's humorous! Today's comedians could learn from this post.
      • It would have been something REALLY embarrassing. Like a Britney song. Or some of that American Idle (no typo) crap. Or imagine him DLing some Boyband junk. Or Tokyo Hotel. Oh, the ways of f..ing up when DLing music today are so numerous, you could get ridiculed for pretty much anything there is in the charts today.

        You really think Coldplay isn't as bad as any of that other stuff you mentioned ?

        Man, you're in *denial*.

        p.s... out of morbid curiosity, what's Tokyo Hotel? Nothing shows up in iTunes for th

    • the kid actually has hot [chick] friends. he's got a myspace page.

      another reason that I think myspace is evil. [slashdot.org]
  • A thousand billion bits of music or one bit of bad writing style?
  • Assuming an average mp3 size of 5mb, that's 12000 songs to fill up just one of those ipods. He'll only have to win about another dozen $10k cards to complete the task!

    • Re:Yay, math! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
      he could always buy TV shows

    • Re:Yay, math! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sirambrose ( 919153 )
      Ignoring your poor math, there are several other major problems with your argument. Your argument assumes that the owner of the iPod doesn't pay for their music and is looking at how much it would cost to re-purchase their entire collection of mp3 files.

      The purpose of an iPod is not to be full, it is to carry the owner's entire music collection. When I bought my 20gb iPod, I only owned 10gb of music. I have no intention of attempting to fill it up. I'll just buy music when I feel like it. Assuming that
      • "In my experience, buying an iPod is reasonable exactly because it costs so little compared to the retail value of the music it holds."

        I told the same thing to my woman when I tried to convince her to let me buy a Ferrari... How could she not value my life that much?

        BTW, you MUST take me for a ride in your school bus. Consider the (cost of contents)/(price of container) ratio on that bad boy!
    • "Assuming an average mp3 size of 5mb, that's 12000 songs to fill up just one of those ipods. He'll only have to win about another dozen $10k cards to complete the task!"

      Or he could sign up for a subscription music service. Oh wait Apple doesn't offer one or let any other company offer one for iPod users. He's SOL.

  • Anyone shooting for it (Score:3, Funny)

    by BigDogCH ( 760290 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @08:46AM (#14791830) Journal
    Do you think people were actually trying to be the 1 billionth? I mean, once it was a few thousand short were people buying a lot of songs to try and be the billionth? It seemed to pay off for one person if they were. Our local TV news agency said that the winner got "a 20 inch computer".
    • Hmm, our news agency also just stated that the $10,000 was a cash prize, but it appears to be wrong. I don't suppose apple bucks are usable at allofmp3.com ? That would buy a LOT of music!!!
  • One Billion x $0.99 cents = $990,000,000.00

    I know they gave away free songs through Pepsi and others. But still... That's a good return for little effort right there.

    • Re:Lotta loot (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 )
      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.
    • Now the sad part, they make $990,000,000.00 and celebrate by giving away an iMac? Isn't an iMac like the Mac equivalent of an intel celeron?

      Yay, thank you for making us hundreds of millions of dollars, here's the cheapest big computer we make... and 10 ipods...

      I mean, it is cool that he gets an iPod and 9 eBay sales, and a crap load of music, but come on, I'd rather have some fancy powerbook or MacBook or something like that.
  • So there were 1 billion instances of Apple's marketing machine working, who cares. Wake me when something really interesting happens.
    • In other news...

      Free music downloads reached 80 bajillion last week. Music companies are rich, complaining, putting out crappy stuff like Coldplay.

  • The RIAA was right (Score:5, Funny)

    by TallMatthew ( 919136 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @08:51AM (#14791848)
    Downloadable music isn't a viable music model.

    • Re:The RIAA was right (Score:3, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      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.
      • This is something I was thinking about the other day... The RIAA resisted any attempts to allow mp3s to be sold, initally (I think) because they thought it would compete with their CD business and later because of fears of piracy. They didn't want to lose control of their product. So iTunes came along and offered DRM. Unfortunately, iTines is the only online music store that works with the most popular brand of player (the iPod). This means Apple gets to call the shots.

        So, having avoided giving up co

      • Re:The RIAA was right (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jimicus ( 737525 )
        Because they can't do as they wish it's not viable.

        Put like that, it rather looks like the business model is more about controlling the distribution of a product rather than the product itself.

        Sounds like organised crime - Prohibition era, organised crime distributes alcohol, makes money and gets very tetchy about someone else competing with them. Today, organised crime distributes music^H^H^H^H^Hdrugs, makes money and gets very tetchy about someone else competing with them.
        • "Sounds like organised crime - Prohibition era, organised crime distributes alcohol, makes money and gets very tetchy about someone else competing with them. Today, organised crime distributes music^H^H^H^H^Hdrugs, makes money and gets very tetchy about someone else competing with them."

          Are you talking about Steve Jobs or the recording industry. It applies to both.
      • It's more than viable, the problem is that they want to keep increasing profit margins every time they format-shift. "Oh well, this gives people more, they will pay more, we will get more money." iTMS isn't playing along with this desire. The general public simply wants to pay less. They will put up with all kinds of crap in order to pay less, Fairplay being minor proof of this since it's fairly permissive... But it does put restrictions on you. I won't buy anything from iTMS any time there's not a Fairplay
      • It's not, for them, they aren't 100% in charge of how much Apple charges for the music.
        I think you're fooling yourself. Most of the money iTunes collects goes straight into the coffers of RIAA members, at 0 effort to themselves. The fact that they still want more doesn't mean they're suffering, only that they want even more free money.
    • What's really scary when you think about it is how many songs have been downloaded illegally outside of the iTunes Music Store. Even now, many music trade groups estimate * that only 1 of 5 songs in the Internet are downloaded legally. That comes out to about 5 billion songs being downloaded through services like Limewire and eMule while iTMS existed. I can only imagine how many songs were downloaded through Napster and FTP sites before the RIAA started cracking down on such activities.

      * Yeah, yeah I know.

  • Audiophile? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Götz ( 18854 ) <[waschk] [at] [gmx.net]> on Friday February 24, 2006 @08:52AM (#14791855) Homepage
    I think the term 'audiophile' does not fit here. Audiophiles buy expensive HiFi equipment and don't listen to 128kbit AAC from the Apple store. Especially as many people can hear the encoding artefacts on good equipment. But I must admit that I cannot hear the difference with the crappy earbuds that came with my iPod.
    • You can play AIFF files and get yourself a good pair of Sennheiser headphones. That's about as good as you're going to get if you want to listen to music on the go.
    • I think the term 'audiophile' does not fit here. Audiophiles buy expensive HiFi equipment and don't listen to 128kbit AAC from the Apple store. Especially as many people can hear the encoding artefacts on good equipment. But I must admit that I cannot hear the difference with the crappy earbuds that came with my iPod.

      Of course you can't hear the artifacts. You're hearing is leaving you [slashdot.org]!

    • Re:Audiophile? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by middlemen ( 765373 )
      Maybe the word should be podiophile !?
      • It is at least better than pedophile. Seriously, iPods are nice equipment, but stuff like 'podcasts' sounds fine on other players.
    • Audiophiles buy expensive HiFi equipment and don't listen to 128kbit AAC from the Apple store.

      Audiophiles buy expensive equipment like record players but listen exclusively ... to the scratches.

      • Re:Audiophile? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Expert Determination ( 950523 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @11:33AM (#14793058)
        Yeah, but scratches are analog and hence have a warmer feeling that's less obtrusive. You don't get the sharp angular sound that you get from digital distortion and so it's truer to the original recording. They don't upset the relative phase and so keep the sonic field in a good state, and if your audio cable has a prime number of cores in it the eddy currents caused by the scratch signals cause destructive interference that actually cleans the audio, especially when the aspect ratio of your room is the golden ratio. And anyway, if you keep your vinyl under a pyramid ths scratches heal themselves over time.
    • Is that really true? (Real question, not me trying to act like a smartass) I have an iPod, but haven't touched the iTunes store other then for podcasts, so I'm not sure myself. I remember back in the day when mp3s first became popular 128 kbit was the norm. Yeah, You could hear artifacts/distortion if you had decent headphones/speakers, but most were content, and some even spinned it as "CD-quality" to consumers (which is laughable). I have assumed mp4/AAC would have bumped the audio quality up so most
      • 128KBit MP3 years ago was horrible. The 128KBit ACC from the iTune store are "okay".

        The problem is: A lot depends on the song as well. I know there are many people out there who say they cannot hear a difference between a compressed file and a "pure" file even on expensive equipment. For me it truly depends on the song.

        But one thing to keep in mind (in my opinion) is the "feeling" a song produce in the room, if I play it back on a pair of 10K speakers [flickr.com] then I am more likely to hear any artifcats or "feel" th
        • Ok, that I def. agree with. Classical in particular comes to mind as a genre that suffers the most from low kbit encoding.
          • Again that depends on how it is arranged. There is (unfortunatly) no easy formula I think. I have some classical music encoded in 128AAC and it sounds good enough (at least on consumer equipment), and I have some more "generic" stuff that sounds just horrible.

            Having said that, encoders have made great strides in the last 10 years.
    • This guy is an audiophile: http://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm [royaldevice.com]

      Not some kid who bought a song on iTunes.

  • Why does everyone focus on the iPods? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TCQuad ( 537187 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @09:22AM (#14791953)
    Beyond the iTMS certificate, the iPods and iMac, the prize includes a 4 year scholarship created in the winner's name [apple.com] to a "world renowned institute of music" selected by Apple. So, while all the loot he gets is nice, he's not the only winner. Actually, given the price of tuition, he's not even the biggest winner.
  • It just so happens my billionth free music download was a Coldplay mashup. [hotstopthealbum.com]
  • What I would really like to see are these stats:

    How many people this represents ... how many unique users have downloaded these billion songs ... because I know people who have downloaded hundreds and some that have downloaded one.

    How many of these people are prize redemptions or giveaways?

    How how many of these songs are validated on more than one computer and one iPod --- that would be really interesting to learn if people are still sharing ...

  • Audiophile? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @09:53AM (#14792100)
    the lucky audiophile

    No audiophile worthy of the appellation would download an overly-compressed pop tune.

    :)

  • 999,899,994 Ashlee Simpson & Cold Play... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bodland ( 522967 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @10:08AM (#14792190) Homepage
    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]

    • Part of being an indie band is self promotion. If I were to see you perform live, and I thought you were good, I would buy your music from iTMS. Get out there and play some gigs and let your audience know where they can buy your music.

  • Audiophiles? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by kitzilla ( 266382 )

    Apple says Alex Ostrovsky from West Bloomfield, Mich., was the lucky audiophile who downloaded "Speed of Sound" by Brit pop band Coldplay ...

    There are audiophiles using iTunes? When did this happen? ;-)
  • 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 j

  • Razorback (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tamerlan ( 817217 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @10:17AM (#14792238) Homepage
    Poor guys owning razorback servers probably hit the mark long ago. And instead of fame they got closed.

    Oh wait.

  • Call me cynical but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by trash eighty ( 457611 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @10:21AM (#14792266) Homepage
    the billionth song was Coldplay i.e. someone cool (i suppose still) and "hip", what a shame it wasn't Uncle Pete's Rog Tog Bimbo Rambo Band or some horrific 70s country music. I mean, that would not have looked as cool in the press release would it? ;)

  • Contribution of iTMS to iPod success seems small (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adam1101 ( 805240 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @10:27AM (#14792318)
    Jobs anounced last month that they've sold 42 million iPods, so they've sold on average less than 24 songs per iPod. Even the lowest capacity Shuffle holds 120 songs. If we assume an average capacity of 2GB (500 songs) per iPod (the majority of sales are probably the cheaper low capacity units), less than 5% of the aggregate iPod capacity is filled with iTMS songs.

    This seems to contradict the oft repeated claims that the iPod ties you to iTMS, or that iTMS is a major contributor to the iPod's success.
    • Apple does not make money on iTMS.
      Apple DOES make money on iPods.

    • This seems to contradict the oft repeated claims that the iPod ties you to iTMS, or that iTMS is a major contributor to the iPod's success.

      Well, to the first, I've got an iPod, but all of my music comes of CDs I've bought. So, no, you're obviously not tied to iTMS if you have an iPod, even though people seem to be completely mistaken about that.

      BUT, since I (and probably a lot of others) don't buy their songs on-line, that means that the people who are buying songs from the iTunes store are doing it in hig

    • Jobs anounced last month that they've sold 42 million iPods, so they've sold on average less than 24 songs per iPod.

      What you forget is that those 42 million iPods were probably sold to less than 42 million people, and purchased songs are transferrable to any number of iPods. An average family may own three iPods, each loaded with thrice the average number of songs from your math.

      This seems to contradict the oft repeated claims that the iPod ties you to iTMS

      Rudimentary knowledge already contradicts tha

    • There are whole markets (like... Poland - 39 million potential Apple customers) that can't use iTMS at all.
  • Is the idea to make a ring of iPods around your waist? How very Luke Skywalker-ish!
  • Word is that Mike Myers has been hired for the next macworld conference, presumably to appear onstage and exclaim

    "One BILLION DOWNLOADS"

    Or not.

  • It figures. (Score:3)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Friday February 24, 2006 @10:41AM (#14792463) Journal
    "Speed of Sound," by Coldplay.

    Figures.

    Fucking Coldplay [everything...laynow.com].
  • For such a huge milestone, that's kind of a lame prize. Why don't they do something like give him free downloads for life?
  • I find it interesting to review a few of the dong milestones - quite meaningful...

    1,000,000,000 - Speed of Sound - Coldplay
    500,000,000 - Mississippi Girl - Faith Hill
    100,000,000 - Sumersault - Zero7
    25,000,000 - Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! - Frank Sinatra

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