Apple iTunes: 10 billion songs later
Seven years after Apple began selling music a la carte, what have listeners bought? — Image: Apple Inc. — The odometer that has been counting song downloads on Apple's (AAPL) iTunes Store for the past week and a half hit the 10 billion mark shortly …
Context & Ripple Effects
Seven years into selling singles rather than albums, Apple's odometer has ticked past 10 billion songs sold — confirmation, if any was needed, that the iTunes Store is the retail backbone of the digital music business Apple built around the iPod.
The milestone lands just weeks after the App Store topped three billion downloads in January 2010, making this less an isolated number than a snapshot of Apple's two storefronts compounding in parallel — one selling tracks, the other selling software — with an unconfirmed report that the iPad could go on presale as soon as next week adding a third device to feed both.
First-order effects
- Apple now holds documented proof that its à la carte model, not the album bundle, is how most listeners buy music — strengthening its hand in every pricing negotiation with record labels.
Second-order effects
- Labels facing a single dominant retailer with standardized 99-cent pricing have stronger incentive to push variable pricing and alternative distribution channels; any erosion of the flat price point would land first on iTunes margins.
Third-order effects
- If download volume keeps scaling while unit revenue stays flat, the economics of recorded music increasingly consolidate around whoever owns the storefront and the device it ships on — a structure Apple has now demonstrated across two consecutive billion-scale businesses.
The trend: Digital media retail is consolidating around platform owners whose storefronts ride on their own devices, with Apple's iTunes and App Store counters marking the pace.