Tremolina said:

Identity said:

Yes, the iTunes Store is a loss leader for Apple. As far as I can discern, its sole purpose is to sell more iPods, etc. to the masses.

Apple reports Itunes breaks more than even every year so where do you get that from? Apple did make a mistake by jacking up the price of many downloads to 1.29 in economic bad times, but Itunes still reported 4.1 BILLION nett sales in 2010, 1 BILLION per quarter and a 22,6% increase from last year. Apple itself reported more than 20 BILLION in revenue this year, which means about 1/5 of Apple's revenue is generated by Itunes. No it's not Apple's main source of income but it's not their core business either. Plus it STILL holds about 70% of the digital downloading market.

So you damn right it's a succes

http://www.apple.com/pr/l...sults.html

http://www.macrumors.com/...n-revenue/

http://www.appleinsider.c...plies.html

http://bits.blogs.nytimes...es-profit/

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[Edited 12/23/10 17:23pm]

But its still money generated for the labels, iTunes is still selling labels property, so really its still just another hand in the pocket of the artists, sure its a safer place for the artist, but is it really? Sure more than half of america owns ipods or more, but 2% of the music on it is from the store itself? And yes iTunes sales are up, BUT music in general is done and cd manufacturing is down much more than the rise in digital sales, so the two are not going hand in hand. Thing is the more you eliminate cd's of course digital will rise in sales, but is it equaling, and its not, because the overall sales of music is way down and has been for a decade, ever since digital became the main source for the most part and was brought into the picture. The thing is that Labels and iTunes are eliminating/alienating the two important people here, artists and the consumer. U will see the prices in the Itunes store go up, dont be shocked, its just the like the whole cd era, that price could never go down because labels never lowered there prices, and if you think they will lower them now when handing over recordings to Itunes to sell you are incorrect, already im seeing the "best buy" mentality with the iTunes store, cds first week 9.99 then jacked up to 11-13.99, so wait now, I have to pay just as much as the store? wait for downloading? wait for a BS looking digital booklet? all this work i have to do, u think consumers want that? hell no, thats why they can go to a free site and have the same new cd for nothing and download it even quicker, sad but its true for the most part.

It's worth noting that album sales in the UK arn't half as grim as they are in the US by comparison. Not sure about other countries though.

thesexofit said:

It's worth noting that album sales in the UK arn't half as grim as they are in the US by comparison. Not sure about other countries though.

To me its because of TWO things. One there is still a pretty good chance for music in the UK, i see tons of shows that highlight music, examples take the group "The Saturdays" only really out in the uk, everytime they have a single i can go on YouTube and i see four or five different shows in (prime time) that showcase music, here in america there is NONE, if an artist has a new album they have to go on a talk show or something where the focus is not them or their album, if its a late night talk show they are jammed at end for about 2-3 minutes, and going by ratings here in the usa, most of people have already fallen asleep by 12:30 when Jay and Dave let the music artist sing. The second thing would still be the UK's issuing of singles, cd singles still exist there, though i dont live there, i know this is true by getting them all over here in NYC in stores like Record Runner. So those things combined are holding up well, they are smart business models in these times, plus the UK's focus to me to be better. NOW the big thing here in the USA is the whole scapegoat, "oh the talent has caused sales to drop" this is BS, why, because the sale music peaked in late 90's to 2000, who were the biggest in that time, Britney, Nysnc, Backstreet Boys etc...OK so is that the most talented artists in music? i mean on this forum i rarely hear these acts as being geniuses, so the peak of sales had nothing to do with talent nor did the fall. The dedication to digital is the main reason, its easy, just as easy to make music now thats how easy it is to stole, use the technolgy get burned by it too, cant have it both ways. At the peak of music sales, digital was not an issue, SURE people were buying a new cd ripping it then putting it up on a site, BUT that shit takes too much time, and is actually an expense too, thats why it wasnt an issue till Now!