Apple Confirms iTunes Goal To Be Short; Pepsi Giveaway Won’t Be Counted

March 15th, 2004 at 2:00 PM - Reports by Brad Gibson

Apple Computer Chief Executive Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple will not be able to sell 100 million song through its iTunes Music Store by the stores first anniversary on April 28, as it had predicted last October. In addition, The Mac Observer has confirmed that Apple will not be including sales of iTunes downloads from a promotional giveaway it is currently running with PepsiCo. Inc. in future download counts.

"Weire not going to make that number," Jobs said in an interview Monday with the Wall Street Journal. "At the rate weire at right now, weill probably have sold 70 million to 75 million songs" by the end of April, he said.

Mr. Jobs made the comments on the same day Apple confirmed the company had sold over 50 million songs since its launch of the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003. Mr. Jobs said the 50 million songs that consumers had purchased excluded those redeemed through a Pepsi iTunes promotion to give away 100 million free songs.

The Mac Observer has also confirmed that Apple will not be including the sale of promotional downloads from the iTunes Music Store in any totals it releases in the future, contrary to other published reports.

"We will not be including them in future download counts," an Apple spokesperson told The Mac Observer Tuesday. "Nielsen SoundScan does not include them in tracking our single track downloads and share of that market."

Mr. Jobs told the Wall Street Journal that redemptions from the Pepsi promotion, "arenit what we thought they might be." Mr. Jobs added that many of the Pepsi bottles with the winning bottle caps were distributed late. A source within Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc., which owns the greater New York City distribution channel, confirmed to The Mac Observer Tuesday that only a small fraction of Pepsi products containing the iTunes giveaway were actually on the streets of New York before last week.