Apple revolutionized the music industry with the introduction of iTunes in 2003, but even Cupertino is having trouble selling albums these days.
iTunes revenue dropped 13% over the last year reports the Wall Street Journal, marking the second straight year that Apple’s digital music sales have declined, after falling 5.7% in 2013.
Apple’s recent acquisition of Beats Music is now even more important as the company is supposedly considering dropping the price on the music streaming service to lure in more subscribers. The Journal also confirms previous rumors that Apple plans to rebrand Beats Music.
“The plummeting download numbers help illustrate why Apple bought the $10-a-month subscription streaming service Beats Music earlier this year, as part of its $3 billion acquisition that included headphone maker Beats Electronics. Apple is rebuilding Beats Music and plans to relaunch it next year as part of iTunes, according to a person familiar with the matter.”
The change will integrate the service into iTunes, aligning it closer to the Apple brand and iTunes Radio as Apple tries to fight of competing services like Spotify and Pandora, which recently teased a new ad model that gives users one hour of free music streaming, if you click on a banner ad.
Source: WSJ
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
8 responses to “iTunes music sales drop for second straight year”
IMO , the musicians must think like old school, just make music and dont care about sales, make music because he likes, but we see actual musicians like justin beeby, want bee famouls in porpouse to became rich, not for express some protest, not to present new thinkings, this kind o artist make music just for the money.
Look this Android App, Saiko Invest, its like old Apple OS design .
How is that supposed to help music sales?
it is not my intention to increase sales.
If it won’t increase their sales, they won’t do it
Yep, more people are using streaming music than buying these days. I myself use iTunes Radio a lot. Its a great service for free. The skip policy is reasonable, with 6 skips per channel per hour, but no daily limit. I do buy a few tracks here and there, but much less than I used to.
Somebody with Apple should sit down a few minutes with an actual iTunes user to see how difficult it is to navigate the website. And the constant updates? About the time I start to catch on to the latest one Apple updates to a new, more confusing, one.
I actually don’t mind this current version that much. It’s the crappy item data that bugs me. Both in the store and in the actual files. I mean there’s two versions of Being Human but they are all mushed up as one in my library. and what the heck is up with putting Downton Abbey etc under the title “Masterpiece Theatre”
I’m curious about something. Music is dropping but what about Movies and TV. That might be picking up the slack and would likely do so even more if they lowered prices, raised quality, improved releasing timings etc.