Scott's Random Thought For The Day (50 Million Song Failure)



I'm a huge fan of the iTunes Music Store. The only reason I listen to any music at all is my iPod, and the iTunes Music Store is probably a good idea of what the future music distribution is going to look like. I was glad to read today that iTunes sales are accelerating. Apple reports they've sold 50,000,000 songs since launching, and now they're selling 2.5 million songs a week. By ways of comparison Apple's largest competitor, Napster, has sold only 5 million songs since launching in December.

Yet there are a lot of people who want to see Apple fail. Here's an extract that was on the front page of CNET.

iTunes sales falter

Apple Computer says it has sold 50 million songs through its iTunes Music Store. That's a lot of songs--but not as many as the company had hoped. Back in October, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said he intended to sell 100 million songs by April, so he's got roughly a month and a half to sell another 50 million. Despite the apparent shortfall, Apple notes that iTunes users are now downloading 2.5 million songs per week--or about 130 million per year.

What this little analysis leaves out is that when Steve Jobs made the prediction that they would distribute 100 million songs, he was including the songs that Pepsi is giving away in their iTunes contest, and those songs aren't included in the sales figures released today. A couple of minutes of fact checking would have turned this up, as the contents of Steve Jobs' "Hell Has Frozen Over" speech is hardly secret. Apple may not quite make the 100 million mark by the end of April, if only because Pepsi has had trouble distributing the contest bottles in a timely manner, but to say that sales have "faltered" is ridiculous.

CNET seemed to realize their mistake, and the story went through a couple of revisions during the day. First they changed it to say Apple had "botched the iTunes tally," and now they've dropped all reference to the failure to make the sales goal. The extract remains on the front page though, and the original story was distributed to many other news organizations. Other people have leapt on the faulty CNET analysis, including the "journalist" (read "Microsoft mouthpiece") Paul Therott.

Considering all this, here's the story I envision appearing in CNET tomorrow.

Earlier today Steve Jobs was on a yacht in San Francisco harbor with a veritable galaxy of recording stars, including Britney Spears and Usher, to celebrate the sale of 100 million songs through the iTunes Music Store. Also in attendance was Luciano Pavarotti, who accidently tripped, sending the yacht tipping violently to one side. Ms. Britney Spears went tumbling into the harbor. Because she was wearing a leather body suit, she began to drown. Calmly, Steve Jobs stepped off the yacht and began walking on the surface of the water. Incredibly, Steve was able to lift Ms. Spears out of the water and carry her across the surface of the water back to the safety of the yacht.

The headline CNET would use, of course, would be Steve Jobs Can't Swim.

Posted: Mon - March 15, 2004 at      

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