Inspirational Technology

iTunes store: More than 1 million sold

Apple's new online music store sold more than 1 million songs during its first week of operation, and analysts say it shows people will pay for downloads if given the chance. [CNET News.com]

Why is it that whenever the record industry complains about lost sales no one ever mentions the fact that the economy is terrible and that just about every industry is losing sales? In this article they did mention that it could be more because of the end of the vinyl to CD conversion, hmm I suspect that ended quite a while ago, but OK. Why won't people just call this for what it is? The economy stinks, people aren't buying as many non-essentials as they were previously (CDs are definitely non-essential), and let's maybe mention the fact that the record industry has been raising prices to go along with it. I was in Borders yesterday and decided to look in on the CD section, $18.99 and $19.99 for newer releases. Sorry, that's just too expensive, obviously there are much cheaper places then Borders, but this still shows how outlandish the full retail price on CDs is now.

Now I'm not sure if I want the Apple service to succeed or fail. On one hand I want it to succeed so that the record companies will finally see that people are actually willing to pay for digital music, but on the other I also want it to fail since the DRM crap is still too annoying. I don't know which is going to be better in the long run.

I'm curious how much Apple would have sold in the first week if there was no DRM, better then 128 Kbs files and a lower price? I know I certainly would feel a lot better about making an investment in the music purchased there and would have bought a few more things. As it is I feel uncomfortable with my purchase and it was only the sheer convenience of it that got me to buy anything at all. Apple did a phenomenal job, now if the music industry would just get the hell out of the way, maybe they could hit a real home run. Apple's solved the sales channel problem, now we just need to get to the point where we're not paying for what is an inferior and crippled end product.