AfterDawn: News

250 million songs sold via iTunes

Apple has announced that the iTunes music store has now sold more than 250 million legal downloads. This is an increase of 20 million on their last announcement. Apple claims that they sell 1.25m songs a day or more. When you consider the escalation in daily sales, if it keeps up, they should reach a 1 billion downloads mark sometime in 2006. Apple iTunes is by far the most popular legit music download service in the world, managing to stay far ahead of the crowd despite a massive growth in competitors and criticism attacking the iTunes store.

In the U.K. the store now also offers more than 800,000 tracks for download. In the U.S. however, Apple claim there are over 1 million tracks in the iTunes music store. Napster announced in 2004 that they were now offering 1 million tracks in their U.K. store. So once again it seems that the big major record labels are cashing in off music downloads. Now all they need is to figure out a solid way to make billions off P2P and they gain complete control again.



Source:
The Register

Written by: James Delahunty @ 24 Jan 2005 19:49

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• 3 comments

• the_scum1

  Screw iTunes. Your just renting the music for as long as you have an Ipod. If you ever switch to a different brand of player you can't use your songs with it(without a lot of work) If I pay for music I want to be able to do with it what I want. I'm sure in the future the price per song will go up once people are hooked good. Just a matter of time.

  25.1.2005 15:43 #1

• mikward

  there is no such thing as complete control. there will always be someone who'll send someone a track for free. its a "rock n' roll" thing.
  want to winge? no way! i read this with interest.
  whats needed is an updated law in the music industry, basically music on the radio is free, so you can copy airwave content for nowt.
  im considering the possibility of my own web domain with shit people want to listen to. but if i sat at home all day in front of my computer.....id be fukd and cashless.
  im so tired of hackers and junk in this mode, i gotto get security.
  that costs cash!
  LONG LIVE INDE....and secure content!

  26.1.2005 09:29 #2

• vudoo

  Well there is a way for the industry to cash in. Its called Ad supportive p2p that you only can run the files with their player. You get ads while you play the songs you don't pay for. Just like Rhapsody but you can Download the files. Now pay for them and your player no longer has a bannar and the files are then turned to regular DRM WMA files in which you can transfer to a portible device. And all bands should be available. Yes there is lots of ways music could be legally FREE. Its just that the industry wants to play God.

  29.1.2005 19:48 #3