Regarding the Forrester Group reporting on drop in iTunes sales, Reuters followed up with the following, "But Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a research report that the number of songs sold per week on iTunes had risen 78 percent in the first nine months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005." Markedly differing analysis results!
All this argument misses a fundamental point: where are the record company promotions for selling online? That iTunes has succeeded as well as it has is interesting in that it's similar to, say, Tower Records managing to increase the sales of CDs without any promotional help from the record companies.
iTunes marketing basically consists of:
a) getting iTunes with an iPod
b) registering iTunes/iPod
c) getting (sometimes--spam filters eradicate about half of them) weekly emails from Apple if you did (b)
d) getting a small amount of advertising in iTunes for similar items when you play items in iTunes (but who watches the screen while playing their music?)
That's it. There's almost none of the old push-pull notion of marketing going on. Record companies seem to be putting no effort into helping anything sell on iTunes. Where's the payola scams for the 21st century?
My hypothesis is this: iTunes sales could be much higher if cooperative efforts were at hand.
Just one example: would I buy a CD (yes, I said CD) from iTunes for US$16.99 plus shipping if it included pre-ripped and auto-imported files for iTunes (even with copy protection)? Yes, I would. If I purchase music, I want to listen to it when and where I am, and that means different devices, one at a time. And I want convenience and interoperability. From the record label side: "We re-invented the CD for the iPod generation." That's PUSH. iTunes is PULL.
My conclusion from the five years of iPod is that the record executives have no imagination, are entrenched in old ways, have no idea what their customers really want, and are spoiled by high profit margins that no longer really exist. They're probably looking at that Forrester report and saying "I told you so." Look inward, record executives--the failure is your own.
The problem isn't necessarily the Forrester report, which had flawed analysis.
The real problem is Andrew Orlowski of The Register. The guy simply hates Apple and Steve Jobs. With a passion.
Just look up his history of articles, where he has been predicting the death of the iPod and Apple since day one. The guy isn't a reporter - he is a hack who writes to try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy to satisfy his own ego. Unfortunately for the rest of us, The Register continues to employ him because it loves the page views hack writing generates.
It can't be said strongly enough, but Andrew Orlowski is the real problem. The guy literally will take a billion song sales a year and, without any irony or self-awareness at all, write that a billion song/year is a total failure because Apple should be selling 10 billion (or a 100 billion, whatever number Orlowski pulls out of his butt to minimalize Apple, iTunes or Jobs). Never mind his past predictions that had iTunes would be nothing but a diasaster of Titanic proportions by now because of its "abusive DRM."
Journalists need to call Orlowski out, because he's making the entire profession look bad - it's like relying on the writings of David Duke when looking for an analysis on racial harmony.
Excellent points from all. I thought about writing about how little iTunes marketing there is, but then decided to just stick with the data. But as you note, they don't do a lot other than the email and weekly podcast.
Thanks again for reading and the time you took to comment!
Carl
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