Thursday, April 29, 2004

The New York Times > Technology > Apple Sells 70 Million Songs in First Year of ITunes Service

The New York Times > Technology > Apple Sells 70 Million Songs in First Year of ITunes Service "On Wednesday, the company released a new version of its iTunes software, available for Macintosh and Windows PC users, that offers several new features, including music videos and the ability for users to publish "playlists" of their favorite songs.
When it was introduced last year, the iTunes service was considered a breakthrough for the music industry in its battle against the illegal downloading of music. Mr. Jobs said that Apple had negotiated with the record companies several modifications of the use rights permitted with digital music downloaded from the iTunes store.
It is now possible to share iTunes songs among five personal computers instead of three. But the number of times a particular playlist can be burned on a CD has been reduced from 10 times to 7. "We don't think this will affect many of our users at all," Mr. Jobs said.
Apple has considered the idea of offering a subscription service, but does not feel there is sufficient demand, he said, noting that most users would rather own their music than rent it for a limited time."

Let's see -- 70,000,000 * 0 is... 0 -- that's the profit margin for Apple, from what I've read, although of course they sell more razors (iPods) because of their free blades (iTunes), and no doubt have many plans to "monetize" the blades as well...

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