iTunes Sells 6 Billion Songs, And Other Fun Stats From The Philnote
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="180" width="208" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
It’s an annual tradition. Every year at Macworld, Apple releases a smattering of stats that gives a peek at how its business is doing. At this year’s Philnote (Phil Schiller gave the speech instead of Steve Jobs), which was Apple’s last Macworld appearance, the stats were few and far between. A few morsels for the information-starved Apple faithful (and investors). But here they are:
- iTunes has now sold six billion songs (it crossed the 5 billion mark last June).
- Over 10 million different tracks are available on iTunes.
- Starting today, 8 million songs are DRM-free, and all 10 million will be DRM free by the end of March.
- There are now over 75 million accounts on iTunes linked to credit cards.
- In fiscal year 2008, Apple sold 9.7 million Macs
- Mac sales grew twice as fast as the overall PC market.
The last billion songs took about five and half months to sell, which was the same pace more or less that it took Apple to get to its fourth billion (January, 2008) and fifth billion songs (June, 2008). So iTunes sales are no longer accelerating, despite many more iPhones and iPods out there. It makes you wonder what the saturation point is for consumers buying songs from iTunes. One thing to cheer about, DRM is now officially dead (it looks like Apple traded variable pricing for getting rid of DRM), but I’m not sure that is going to spur sales much.
From my own experience, I buy a few albums when I get a new iPod, and then my purchases taper off. I’ve only purchased 139 songs from iTunes over the past five years. That comes to $28 a year. But then, I’m well past my music-buying prime. How much have you spent on iTunes?
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="132" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="105" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="134" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="93" width="187" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
