Apple iTunes is one of the biggest source of music sales today. Accessing the content on Apple iTunes was officially exclusive to the software that is required for download. But now the walled garden company quietly rolled iTunes music, movies, music videos, and TV episode descriptions to the web in a new feature called iTunes Charts.
iTunes Charts is not exactly the same content that is showed on the desktop software but rankings are being shown for the various categories. On the web you can browse the top 100 in each category.
The problem with iTunes Charts on the web is that you cannot preview audio clips or buy the track on the spot. You still need the desktop software for that.
Around April 2008 Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) passed Wal-Mart as the #1 music retailer in the U.S. Now Apple controls 25% of all music sales through iTunes. Compact discs have 65% of all music sales. The remain 10% is other digital music sources.
In the first half of 2009, Apple had a 69% share of all digital music sales and Amazon.com had about 8%. ”The growth of legal digital music downloads, and Apple’s success in holding that market, has increased iTunes’s overall strength in the retail music category,” stated NPD Group entertainment industry analyst Russ Crupnick.
In terms of the CD market share, Wal-Mart has about 20% of the total market while Amazon.com and Target has about 10% each. Best Buy has 16% of the CD market share.
“Many people are surprised that the CD is still the dominant music delivery format, given the attention to digital music and the shrinking retail footprint for physical products,” added Crupnick. “But with digital music sales growing at 15 to 20 percent, and CDs falling by an equal proportion, digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010.”
BoyGeniusReport heard a rumor that iTunes 9 will have some cool new features. For starters there will be Blu-ray support. iTunes 9 will supposedly have the ability to organize and arrange applications for your iPhone and iPod Touch. There is also supposedly going to be some sort of social network integration.
I believe it is inevitable that Apple will add Blu-Ray support to iTunes. Why? Because Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association consortium Board of Directors. Apple could really use work when it comes to arranging applications. As a matter of fact when I download applications on the phone and try to sync it with iTunes, there is a lot of struggling.
Currently there are about 2500 Blu-Ray titles available for purchase in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Australia has about 1000 and the U.K. has about 1500.
On December 2, 1983 Michael Jackson released a 14 minute long music video for the song “Thriller.” The Thriller music video was directed by John Landis (Blues Brothers 2000, Beverly Hills Cop III, Coming to America, ¡Three Amigos!, National Lampoon’s Animal House, and An American Werewolf in London).
On June 25th Michael Jackson passed away and the world was shocked. In order to recapture their memories of the King of Pop, they watched the Thriller video on the Internet. The Thriller music video was watched over 8.5 million times since June 25th. Old Michael Jackson songs are almost among the most downloaded songs on iTunes as of right now.
On June 27th, about 1,500 inmates at CPDRC performed a tribute. The tribute was completed in 10 hours and features the songs “Ben,” “I’ll Be There,” and “We Are The World.” This video was watched almost 3 million times since being created 3 days ago.
Around the time that the Palm Pre launched, one of the features that was low key was the ability to sync with iTunes. This feature was major because the Palm Pre is supposed to be a major iPhone competitor. The fact that this feature did not appear in the limelight until close to the release date, it seems like Palm did not want Apple to prevent the feature from happening.
I can understand why because Tim Cook even indicated that they were willing to do anything in their power to prevent competitors from ripping off their intellectual property. ”We like competition–as long as our competitors don’t rip off our IP. And we’re going to go after anyone who does. I’m not talking about any particular company, but we are ready to suit up and go against anyone. We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we will use every weapon at our disposal….” stated Cook.
In the support area of the Apple website, an entry appeared about unsupported third party digital media players. Below is the text of the article:
Apple designs the hardware and software to provide seamless integration of the iPhone and iPod with iTunes, the iTunes Store, and tens of thousands of apps on the App Store. Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.
The Palm Pre may no longer have the ability to be synced with iTunes in the near future.
Apple has something to look forward to in Europe. The Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM) has agreed to drop the territorial restrictions that they have over collecting royalties for about 128,000 artists.
Apple currently dominates over half of the digital music sales through the iTunes services. Outside of their country, Apple does not allow Europeans to purchase music. Because of the restrictions that the European Commission had in the past, they have limited what consumers could buy on the Internet.
With these license royalty restrictions being dropped, it is very likely that Apple’s market share in Europe will grow.
Apple will really be testing the loyalty of their consumers starting April 7. They will begin charging $1.29 per track for individual singles and selected classic tracks. This breaks the psychological barrier of the $0.99 per song. Apple is trying this higher price at a pressing time in the economy where consumers are forced to stretch their budgets.
This move is part of a variable pricing strategy put together by the company which will also see some songs receive a lower download price.
“This will be a PR nightmare,” stated former EMI Music executive Ted Cohen, currently a managing partner of TAG Strategic. “It is for the music industry what the AIG bonuses are for the insurance industry.”
Apple made the announcement about the changes to iTunes this past Janaury. The songs being downloaded at the new price will be DRM-free. This means you will be able to copy these songs from multiple computers to your iPod. Currently the iPod erases all of the music if you want to copy files from another computer. Many people complained about that.
Will the trade-off be worth it? We’ll find out in April.
