Monday March 15, 9:38 AM EST

NEW YORK, March 15 (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) said on Monday it has sold 50 million songs over the Internet through its iTunes Music Store, which charges 99 cents a song.

The company said that the 50 million songs excluded those redeemed through a PepsiCo. Inc. promotion to give away 100 million free songs.

Apple, known for its Macintosh computers, sells an iTunes digital music player and launched its iTunes music store for Mac users in April 2003. It expanded the service to personal computer users in October 2003.


More here

Customers need to download Apple's digital music software to buy the songs.

When Apple expanded the service five months ago, it set a goal to sell 100 million songs by April 28, 2004, one year from the music store's opening. At that time, it had sold 13 million songs.

The Cupertino, California, company said it is selling 2.5 million songs per week, which would translate into 130 million songs per year.

Apple shares fell 51 cents to $27.05 Monday on Nasdaq.

Competitor Roxio Inc. (ROXI) said earlier Monday it expected current-quarter revenue to be higher than expected due to strong demand in its online music division, which is known as Napster.
http://money.excite.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=reu&src=201&news_id=reu-n15534376&date=20040315

How IS Napster doin, anyone know?

Who really cares how many songs they sell? They already have said it doesn't make any damn money....

"The company said that the 50 million songs excluded those redeemed through a PepsiCo. Inc. promotion to give away 100 million free songs."
And how many people have redeemed their lucky caps so far? Is Pepsi talking?

And Virgin announced its entry into the online music game, offering true competition by slashing the price of their upcoming selections to the completely arbitrary "we're not price fixing" cost of 99 cents.

Distributors: $49,500,000.00
Artist: $0.00
Consumers: -$49,500,000.00 & no guarentee of retention of the product.

"How IS Napster doin, anyone know?"

Here's some info:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7988684.htm

"Napster lost $15 million in its first two months of operation. And the most recent sales data... shows Napster with an estimated 12 percent share of the download market, compared to Apple's 56 percent. Analysts estimate Napster's market share at 15 percent to 20 percent." And Apple is not doing as well as expected...

L'est you forget, Apple isn't into music sales for profit, only as a vehicle to sell more iPods, where the real profit is!

thanks mroop

it appears they're struggling

I have asked before and I will ask again. Can anyone present any documented proof that a single RIAA member's recording artist has received a single penny from these sales? If so how much? This money is like the "skim" money that got the Las Vegas Casinos in trouble during the 50s.

FewerInhibit... you're right. It is the sale of the iPod (even with its failing battery).
You know, the RIAA said, right upfront, that they represented the labels, not the artists.
Fossil, I haven't read one article about online music sales that even mentioned the artist. It's pathetic.

"L'est you forget, Apple isn't into music sales for profit, only as a vehicle to sell more iPods, where the real profit is!"
i didn't forget. Why don't they just brag how many ipods they have sold then?

You buy one song for $.99 and where does that money go?

$.70 goes to the RIAA

so now Apple is left with $.29

Credit card companies, Merchant services and bank fees combined take about $.35

We'll assume they'll cut a deal with Apple and take only $.20

Apple now has $.09

A recent survey in PC Magazine stated that 1% of users who download "legal" music purchase the entire album, 5% purchase 2 to 4 songs...

and 94% purchase only one song...

$.09 is what Apple is left with when you buy one song.

That $.09 goes to Advertising, The programmers, Servers/Server space, Bandwidth costs and additional labor costs (payroll) by all the hardworking folks who took the time to put something as massive as iTunes together (and no, I'm not being sarcastic, I'm a software developer, I know the magnitude of a project like this one)

Meanwhile, the RIAA sits on they're lazy ass and collect a paycheck every month from Apple.

What a sweet f*ckin' deal for Apple, huh?

hehe... apple is not a company that will stick with a liability for long. they will cut inefficient arms off quickly.
I expect them to keep it only long enough to justify the fact that "hell froze over" *they developed a windows version of itunes, the "best jukebox developed for personal use"

Apple gets much more than 0.09/song!!!

First, the merchant and bank processing fees are much lower than 35% as you suggest; (usually it's ~3% or less; but lets just say it's 5%) which means Apple pays only $0.05 for processing purchases. [Recall, Apple doesnt have to pay extra bank or merchant fees because they already had their online store setup for Apple Computers stuff.]

RIAA gets $0.65 purchases.
RIAA splits this among their employees (from management to legal staff to their computer team to their cleaning staff). Whether they give any share of this to the artist is questionable.

Apple gets $0.31 per song. This gets used for all costs associated with their itunes store. Their advertising costs is not just to sell songs; it's to get consumers onto their website and look at the coool products Apple has besides just songs. and, of course, the iPods is where they reap in profits. (But, stiff competition is developing.... The Napster MP3 player is out there, and recently Virgin is getting into the online music store and they tooo have a mp3 player.)