Apple Computer celebrated the first anniversary of its online music service on Wednesday, announcing it had sold 70-million songs and was still growing.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, speaking to reporters on the anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, said the figures show it is ”the number one online music service in the world” with some 70% of the market for legal music downloads.
”We currently [sell] 2,7-million songs per week, that is a rate of 140-million songs per year, so we feel we have a lot of momentum,” Jobs said, adding that the service posted ”a small profit this past quarter”.
Jobs added that iTunes ”has exceeded our wildest expectations during its first year, charting a new direction for the music industry”.
To kick off its second year, Apple launched a new version of iTunes with additional features and a bigger selection of songs.
”We started with 200 000 songs, we now have over 700 000 songs, and expect to have over a million songs by the end of the year,” Jobs said.
Apple was the first to launch the 99-cent song download, spawning about a dozen others offering a similar formula, helping computer users shift from illicit music-swapping to a legal download endorsed by the major record labels.
Apple said it was making some changes in the rights for users who download from its site. The number of times a user can burn the same playlist onto CDs is being reduced from 10 to seven.
But at the same time, users will be allowed to listen to the downloaded songs on five separate computers, up from three.
Another new feature will allow iTunes users to convert songs from the Windows Media Audio format to Apple’s AAC format so they can be played using iTunes software or downloaded onto the iPod music player.
Jobs said reports that Apple was preparing to boost its price were unfounded.
”The prices will remain 99 cents per song and any rumours to the contrary are not true,” he said.
Jobs said the music sales have helped spur sales of its music player and probably helped boost its Macintosh computer sales. But the company last year broke tradition and created a version of iTunes for Windows to allow access to those using PCs of its longtime rival Microsoft.
”The unbeatable combination of iTunes and the market-leading iPod offers music fans a seamless experience for discovering, buying, managing and enjoying their music anywhere,” he said.
In the first quarter, Apple sold 807 000 iPods, a tenfold increase from the same period of 2003.
Recent surveys indicate that illicit music-swapping may be fading somewhat following an industry crackdown on the practice, with authorised sites like iTunes showing rapid growth.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey released on Sunday found that 14% of US internet users said they had once downloaded music files, but have stopped. That represents some 17-million people.
However, the number of people who say they download music files increased from an estimated 18-million to 23-million since the between November 2003 and February 2004.
This increase is likely due to the combined effects of many people adopting new, paid download services and, in some cases, switching to lower-profile peer-to-peer file sharing applications, the researchers said.
A survey by comScore Media Metrix showed five million fewer people are actively running KaZaa, the most popular file-sharing service, compared with a year ago.
The report indicated that more than 11-million US internet users visited six major paid online music services.
These services, such as Apple’s iTunes and a new Napster — which in contrast to the former Napster is a legal, paid service — ”have made great strides in relatively few months in drawing millions of consumers to a new breed of online alternatives,” said Erin Hunter, senior vice president of comScore Media Metrix. – Sapa-AFP