The New York Times has a short, but interesting article today about the how much iPod sales are driving traffic at Apple’s iTunes Music Store:
Apple?s ubiquitous iPod and its iTunes music store were intended to be a kind of perpetual motion machine, with iPods helping to sell iTunes and iTunes helping to sell iPods
Although both are successful, the relationship may not have worked out exactly as expected. At any given point, the cumulative number of songs sold by the iTunes store has generally been about 20 times the cumulative number of iPods sold, according to Forrester Research, the technology consulting firm. That ratio has recently crept up to roughly 22 to 1, as 1.5 billion songs have been sold. The figures were compiled from public statements by Apple.
The numbers suggest that iPods are not driving iTunes sales as much as early supporters may have expected.
?IPods are not sitting around generating dozens and dozens of transactions every quarter,? said Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst for Forrester Research. ?People buy a certain number of songs, and then they stop.?
Perhaps. Or maybe they are loading their iPod’s with music from other sources. I would guess that well over 3/4 of the 4000+ songs on my iPod came from compact discs that either Kellie or I already owned, or from MP3’s that I’ve gotten from other sources. I do download songs from iTunes occasionally, but most of my recent purchases have been viideo files.
December 11th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I’ve downloaded maybe 30+ songs from the iTune store; all the rest are from CD’s or other MP3 sources also. I prefer to own a CD and back it up onto my iPod rather than purchase an album on iTunes. The only times I buy songs is when they are singles I really like but don’t want the whole CD.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:48 am
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December 12th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
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