Boiling it down - songs per ipod.
Man, there's a lot of passion on this issue. The comments on this blog have gotten deeeeeeep into the weeds, deeper than need be. Let me try boiling down to the simplest form.
Between 2/23 and 9/1 of this year, apple sold 500M songs. That during a period when there were well over 60M ipods (say, 50M users accounting for duplicates/replacements). That's 10 songs per user over 190 days or 6.33 months. That comes to 1.58 songs per month per ipod user.
This has several possible source of inaccuracy:
- If there are even fewer iPod users, the number will be larger. for example, if the 60M ipods sold into 30M users, then the number would be 2.78 songs per ipod.
- As songs are bought by users without ipods, the number would be smaller. For example, if 100M of the songs sold to non ipod owners, the number would be 1.33 songs per ipod.
We'll probably find out more tomorrow if Steve announces both iPod and iTunes numbers for December. That may give us another 3 month sample to consider.
Now, I apologise, but I need to get off of the comments for now...Let's revisit after the next data point.
9 Comments:
(My own analysis does not show the 7 iTunes/iPod IB per month spike in the first year but...)
Should it really be any surprise that even as iPod growth slows a bit that the overall userbase still outgrows the market for digital downloads?
All we are seeing is that 3 years ago, the early adopters of mp3 who will also migrate to digital are now being offset by the wider userbase of mp3 players. This tells me that the iPod has not hit a wall (the mp3 market continues to grow at a very healthy pace, but it is extremely affected by a huge spike in holiday sales) and that the developing digital download market lags the mp3 player market by a few years. I would expect to see the number decline from say around 5 to 1 or less over the first several years of the digital download market. Only once the mp3 market is actually fully saturated or more fully mature would I expect to see the number start to climb back up from 1. Say in 2-3 years.
*laugh* music is all about passion, no suprise that you're getting so many comments.
Hats off to your handling of it all though, a lot of other people would just froth at the mouth and lambast everyone while you stick to the data and your analysis of them.
Personally, I'm just waiting for some tasty Zune partner announcements or firmware/software upgrades. Like the ability to have more control over how my files are named after rip or copy from device :) Oh, and a small speaker/clock dock for the bathroom.
Let's see: no one predicts digital sales to match CD sales for the next 5-10 years.
Apple is the only player to actually penetrate most of the major music markets (many of these entries have only occurred recently).
Many nations do not have the adequate IP and digital policies to support a digital market equivalent to the market for physical formats.
Even in the U.S. market and in the case of Apple (with the largest, most developed store with 3.5+ million tracks), the studios and artists are not offering their full catalogs. Even in new music where the offering is a much larger percent of the actual catalog, there are serious gaps. Many of the most influential and bestselling artists still prevent their work from entering the market. Niche markets (non pop music and independent labels) have greater digital opportunities but also have many disadvantages and are slow to come to market.
We only have 2.5 years of data from Apple. This data is highly affected by seasonality and significant milestones (releases of new iPods, expansions to new markets, increases in catalogs, cross promotions, milestone promotions, etc...).
Moreover, this data easily defies simple interpretation because the data points do not occur over the same and/or regular periodic intervals nor do they get issued (necessarily) for key milestone dates, do not correspond for the two pieces of data (hardware and tracks), and do not account for the entire industry nor are they directly analogous to the current physical music industry.
What do I conclude: there are no conclusions to be made from this data other than Apple is succeeding.
Attempting to do so is an attempt at spin.
David,
Are you at liberty to state the November and December Zunes sold, and the songs sold per Zune?
Zune is a slightly different beast... since it has the (arguably awesome) "Zune Pass" subscription model available, unlike the precious iPod & iTunes.
How can you count that? :)
Umm... let's see: you can count the subscribers. Duh!
Hey David, check this video.
http://news.com.com/1606-12994_3-6147955.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news
Bill Gates said that Apple is in a great disadvantage because they have a close platform. That Apple don't get that having partners that built the hardware is better, because of price, design, variety, etc.
So, why the Zune then?
David, please stop this number crunching. I was hoping your blog would be about Zune and making it the very best & widely available entertainment ecosystem.
Microsoft needs to seriously consider how you are going to respond to these Apple announcements. I hope you guys have some magic up your sleaves.
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