iTunes Sales Continue to Fall

[matt merch]

July 30, 2003
Ciarán Tannam

iTunes have been one of the few pay for download services that have been very willing to release figures about sales since day 1. Any time anyone has asked for download figures they have been more than forthcoming with regard to weekly sales.

It is easy to accumulate these figures and come up with a sales pattern for iTunes.

In the first day April 28th iTunes sales were at 200,000 per day. By May 5th CNet were reporting that sales had topped 1,000,000 meaning 140,000 songs were been sold per day. By May 14th this figure had fallen to 125,000. While figures published in the The NY Times on May 28th translate the figure into 100,000 per day.

The decline continued from there. 5 million tracks had been sold by June 23rd meaning the average daily sales had now hit 89,000. The figure hit 6.5 million on July 22nd translating into 52,000 sales per day.

The sales figure may reflect seasonal variance and other launch hype related factors. However there is a clear decline in place and with iTunes still failing to sign up some big bands the perceived success of iTunes is not quite what all are making it out to be.

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=208

[higgins999]

This article first appeared at Slyck.com - http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=208

[johnsmatrix]

What is I-tunes?... Hehe....why am I gonna use my credit card again for something I can get free...*cough*Kazaa*cough. Well you know back a few years there were people with bunny ears on top of their tv and then there were people who paid for local channels....no suprise here...People are paying 99(Why is their not a friggen cents key on my keyboard Jesus Christ) for something their friends get free and they probably get teased on a daily basis. I hope this is coherent, I just woke up.

[isus]

im gonna say what i said to this at neowin:

"omg, run! only 52000 a day! that's not even $52000 a day! how do they keep it running?"

seriously folks.

and 'johnsmatrix':
why should you pay? bc i would have serious doubts you could find some of the iTMS' unique songs.

[Krypt0]

hmm...

iTunes = bad.
Free p2p = good!

[Wolfie]

Big surprise there..... :mellow

The first few weeks numbers of any project are always deceptive. Its something new and has been hyped up to heavens so you get high numbers. Plus ppl will be trying to figure if they like the service.

The true test is if they can keep the high numbers, when the initial excitment is over.

Also the fact that some big name bands shot them down was not particularly helpful to Itunes and the cause of paid music downloading service.

In the very end the old adage of "why pay for the milk when you can get the cow for free" plays into this.