AfterDawn: News

Apple's iTunes sold 3 billion songs

Apple Inc.'s iTunes download store has sold over 3 billion legal music downloads since the service first launched in April 2003. This latest milestones comes six months after Apple announced it had sold 2 billion songs in total. It has reached its first billion sales by February 2006. Its success earned it the title of the third largest music retailer in the U.S., behind Wal-Mart and Best Buy Co.

The NPD Group determined this ranking based on units sold and not on revenues. The firm counted every 12 tracks purchased online as being the equivalent of an album bought on a physical CD. The success of the iTunes store relies heavily on Apple's iPod line-up.



Back in April, the company announced that it had sold 100 million iPods. Due to DRM restrictions, music bought from the iTunes music store (unless DRM-free at a premium rate) can only be played back on an iPod, making it the only legitimate, fully authorized resource for iPod owners to get major label music online.

Source:
Yahoo (AP)

Written by: James Delahunty @ 31 Jul 2007 11:41

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• 5 comments

• borhan9

  They had to do research for this to find this info out. Of course the Apple Ipod is an excellent multimedia player. However their online store no one in their right mind would use. You would use the Itunes Music and Video manager to manage your files but never their online store.
  
  This was a simple but true fact.

  2.8.2007 15:33 #1

• sawbg

  All that's bull. I can burn my 99 cent songs from iTunes to CD and then import them back into iTunes as an mp3 file. Also, the "premium rate" is only $1.29!

  4.8.2007 15:47 #2

• sawbg

  Originally posted by borhan9: They had to do research for this to find this info out. Of course the Apple Ipod is an excellent multimedia player. However their online store no one in their right mind would use. You would use the Itunes Music and Video manager to manage your files but never their online store.
  
  This was a simple but true fact.Why? It works fine for me.
  

  SAWBG
  
  Vistit my computer blog @ http://my.afterdawn.com/sawbg

  4.8.2007 15:51 #3

• Unfocused

  With all this revenue, why do they need to charge $600 for the iPhone?

  14.8.2007 15:03 #4

• sawbg

  To make up for the cost of it.
  
  Besides, most of the 99 cents goes to the artist

  14.8.2007 15:17 #5