Electric Dreamstate

That is to say that they don't give a shit that the iTunes store isn't selling that many songs, they probably do care about the negative press that the sales downturn has riled up. You can read the story of the music store's "collapse" if you haven't already.

Just in case anyone doesn't know, Apple doesn't make money off of the iTunes music store. Well that isn't completely true, but they get, at most, a few cents on each song, and the total profits they get from it are, to use the lexicon of one Bill Gates, a rounding error in comparison to the money they make selling iPods (or Macs for that matter).

The purpose of the music store isn't to make money, the purpose is to get the record industry off its back about how machines like the iPod are only used to carry around pirated music. Of course, one could argue that the primary source of music on most iPods isn't downloaded music of any variety, illegal or otherwise, but tunes ripped from CDs. But the record industry has done its damnedest to make ripping music from CDs impossible, so that can't be true.

But that's just my humble opinion on the news. I don't have a PhD in online-musicology or anything.

Anyway, it seems that the doomsaying about the music store were a bit premature.

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