Here’s some good news for Apple…
In the latest earnings call, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple has nearly 800 million iTunes accounts. In June of 2013, iTunes had about 575 million accounts. That’s a growth rate of roughly 40 percent in one year on a very mature product. However, iTunes doesn’t let users merge old accounts with current ones. Cook didn’t say how many of these accounts are actually active.
Tim Cook did point out that most of these 800 million accounts have credit card information attached, which is both impressive and frightening.
After the call, Apple stock elevated more than 8 percent in after-hours trading.
When Nina Ulloa isn’t writing for DMN she’s usually reviewing music or at a show. Follow her on Twitter.
Impressive! How big percentage is buying overpriced tunes? Is half of it just for aps?
so, TuneHunter thinks .99 cents is too much for a song?
Hehe, for once I’m with you — that comment almost made me faint.
Not one word about [censored] either. 🙂
By far Itunes is my labels biggest seller. Beatport is next in line. Being in the EMD style, Itunes sells for our artist reach the top 10%, which is impressive. Dollar’s per month are around 1000 or 2000. Not much compared to the top “POP/RAP” styles, which run in the double digits. Over all Itunes has impressed me since 2003.
Oh yea, most of the tracks sold on my label via Itunes are not 99 cents.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eric-ross/id443760242
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/eric-ross/id443760242
1.29 is the main reason for 9 out of 10 Shazam results to go to torrent or to YouTube not to the oversized iTunes or Amazon icons.
Any relevant tune on iTunes is 1.29 not 99c. The average has to be around 1.15
Overpriced? 🙂
At any rate, Apple can create whatever they want now.
How about a new service that offers everything?
Top quality music, movies, communication, news — all rolled into one?
People would easily pay $20/month for that instead of paying $X to Netflix, plus $Y to Spotify, plus $Z to Verizon, plus…
Apple already has our credit card data. We just have to click. I’d do it in a heartbeat.
like amazon prime, but bigger?
Amazon what?
Apple has the contacts, the infrastructure, the goodwill and the creativity to do it.
Google and Amazon have none of that.
the goodwill! HA
Yes Nina, goodwill.
While Google declared war on music, and Amazon sold pirated software, Apple spent its time and money developing the world’s most complete ecosystem for artists (including our primary source of income).
People remember stuff like that. The result is goodwill.
Here’s merriam-webster’s definition if you haven’t experienced goodwill in your own life:
a : a kindly feeling of approval and support : benevolent interest or concern
b (1) : the favor or advantage that a business has acquired especially through its brands and its good reputation
(2) : the value of projected earnings increases of a business especially as part of its purchase price (3) : the excess of the purchase price of a company over its book value which represents the value of goodwill as an intangible asset for accounting purposes
2
a : cheerful consent
b : willing effort
yeah, i’m sure apple created the first mass digital music store so they could save musicians. and i’m sure google and amazon created their products with the intent of destroying you.
don’t patronize me, anon.
i’m sure Apple’s planned streaming service is full of goodwill….
IPod Classic – 160Gb of storage. (According to Apple) That’s enough for 40,000 songs. At $0.99 per track that $39,600 assuming all those tracks were purchased through the iTunes store…
Apple have conveniently given us devices capable of carrying around every piece of pirated music we could possibly want to listen to, seeing as there’s no way we could afford to fill ’em with legit music. And all for less than two hundred and fifty bucks. Thanks, Apple!
“Goodwill”…you made me laugh and cry at the same time. I think this has to be the quote of the week.
It’s coming on Apples terms there’s a lot on inovation in the works.
I’m guessing the vast, vast majority of those adds were to buy Candy Crush, not music.
Yeah, but you know how terribly easy it is to buy anything from iTunes once you have an account. 🙂
And it is the world’s largest record store, after all.
And yet digital music download sales aren’t flying through the roof.
Hmmmmmm…
True.
But having the world’s biggest record store + almost one billion credit card numbers is not a bad combination.
I think Apple will find a way to use it.
Sure. They’ll introduce their own on-demand streaming service, which will no doubt be very successful.
iTunes radio? You don’t get to pick the songs, but if a genre does it for you, it’ll play forever..
For once you may be right, but I’d be a bit careful with the prophecies if I were you. Here’s what you said about Beyoncé’s latest album:
“it is just some silly arty-farty project, which very few will care about”
And here’s the latest result of her ‘silly’ project:
“BEYONCÉ LEADS TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE
Singer Beyonce has been selected as the cover star for Time magazine’s special 100 most influential people issue […]
Beyonce was credited with having “shattered music-industry rules – and sales records” when she released her surprise album in December last year.” 🙂
SOURCE: BBC, April 25, 2014
I think this is a comparable stat – just 225 million in June 2011
http://allthingsd.com/20110607/25-million-ipads-1-billion-tweets-wwdc-2011-by-the-numbers/
Does anyone know how many of the 800 M accounts are US? Source? Thanks.