GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that the Apple iTunes service has missed its target of 100 million downloaded songs by 30% after 12 months in operation. The service only got 70 Million download songs but still puts the Apple iTunes service at the top of the legal download services. Apple also claimed that their iTunes service has claimed 70% market share for legally downloaded singles and albums based on its own calculations.
Customers are buying 2.7 million downloadable songs a week from the service, if apple keep this pace up the service will have sold 140 million songs by next year. Apple has around 700,000 legally downloadable music tracks on their site but during the news of Apple's amazing feet they also slipped in some words on how they will be tightening up their DRM. The effects include the number of times a play list can be burned down from ten to seven but in compensation for this restriction downloaded music can be shared among five computers instead of three. In contrast the new napster service has only sold five million songs in four months.
| Apple undershot its first-year iTunes Music Store download target by 30 million songs, the company admitted today, 12 months after the digital music business was By contrast, the new Napster managed five million downloads in its first four months of operation.Among the good news, Apple slipped in a little note to the effect that it is tightening its DRM policy, cutting the number of times a playlist can be burned to CD from ten to seven. The move seems unlikely to be much of hindrance to heavyweight music duplicators, leading us to suspect it"s more to do with keeping the labels happy. By way of compensation, downloaded music can now be shared among five computers rather than three |
You can read the full story over at The Register. They seem to be tightening up their DRM to keep record companies happy who want to extract as much money out of users as possible. As we know record companies want more money for download songs and think that restricting users even more will somehow aid in getting download services to take off. If there are going to be those kind of restrictions on music then how are they going to get people that use illegal services to change to legal ones, it all seems crazier to me.
Source: The Register.
