Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Apple Inc (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported Thursday that the company’s iTunes Store has passed the five billion download mark from the store’s “catalog of more than eight million songs, over 20,000 TV episodes and in-excess of 2,000 film titles.” Most impressive are the number of movies customers rent or buy everyday, which is reported to be in excess of 50,000 movies. This announcement comes as the price of Apple’s stock has fluctuated slightly Thursday.

Despite this seemingly great news for the music industry, some artists are not as happy about iTunes’ share of music sales and distribution. According to Pulse 2.0, Kid Rock has decided to “completely boycott iTunes” because it is an “old system” where the store and the record company take all profits and do not share it with the artists. Even more revealing, when asked his view about music piracy, Kid Rock advocated “leveling the playing field” calling for people to steal everything, from music to gas, because either way the executives and distributors have enough money and will not “miss” what consumers steal.

Thinking about those sentiments and how much pull iTunes has in the music market raises questions about other stores that have emerged in the past year, like Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) MP3 store. That store notoriously acts as nothing more than an agent for the music companies, with Amazon.com taking a small fee versus the power that iTunes exerts. Whether artists see any more money from Amazon.com’s arrangement is unknown, but without Amazon.com working as another distributor it would seem hopeful and more likely.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Marketing and Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.