iTunes Music Store Hits 350 Million Download Mark

April 14th, 2005 at 3:00 PM - TMO Scoop by Brad Gibson

Customers of Appleis iTunes Music Store (iTMS) have purchased and downloaded more than 350 million songs, a transcript from Wednesdayis conference call with has analysts revealed.

Unlike previous announcements that Appleis online service had hit certain milestones, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer made the announcement as a quick passing comment during his opening remarks to analysts Wednesday. The Mac Observer found the comment in reviewing a transcript of the conference call late Thursday.

"Last week we crossed the 350 million songs download milestone and despite the increased competition, our share of (the) online music market in the U.S. has remained at or above the 70% level as measured by Nielsen SoundScan," Mr. Oppenheimer said.

Nielsen/SoundScan has confirmed to TMO that it does not and has never broken down online music market share figures, despite Mr. Oppenheimeris comment. In actually fact, Apple is calculating itis own market share number based on its knowledge of downloads from its iTMS and subtracting from the total number of online music service downloads reported weekly by Nielsen/SoundScan.

An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available for comment to confirm the exact date the company hit the 350 million download mark. If it happened on Wednesday, April 6, the company has sold some 1.38 million songs daily in the last 36 days.

Apple last reported it surpassed 300 million in online music sales on March 2.

The iTMS is available for Mac and Windows personal computers and works exclusively with Appleis line of iPod digital media devices. The iTMS is available in 15 countries. In the U.S., the service features more than one million songs and more than 9,000 audiobooks.