Well, now that the iTunes Music Store is running at full steam, most of its mainstream media attention has been almost embarrassingly positive, and its early sales numbers beat Apple's own projections by a factor of four, you've probably decided that it's safe to start sweating the small stuff. Like, what's up with certain songs and albums disappearing from the store? (We initially indicated that the phenomenon was due to certain songs selling out; we've since heard rumors that the inventory control problem is actually being caused by rampant shoplifting.) Why did the QuickTime versions of the AppleMusic ads vanish from Apple's web site just when the commercials started to show up on TV? When they mysteriously returned a few days later, why is Jacob still rapping "Lose Yourself," while on TV he's doing "The Real Slim Shady"? Mysteries for the ages, one and all.

But maybe it's not time to stop worrying about the big picture just yet, since new evidence has come to light that the iTMS isn't necessarily the runaway success we've been led to believe it is. Rolling Stone just had to go and dish out a little perspective, the spoilsports; while Apple did sell two million songs in just over two weeks, even if that rate holds steady, the resulting $34 million or so in annual revenue for the music labels apparently ranks lower than the industry's take from last year's sales of vinyl records.

We'll take a moment to explain this to our younger viewers. See, kids, about 80 million years ago, most popular music was sold in the form of flat vinyl discs, usually black and either seven or twelve inches in diameter, with the music encoded into a physical groove that spiraled from inside to outside, wrapping around the surface either 33.33, 45, or 78 times per minute of recorded sound. To play them, prehistoric tool-using primates such as ourselves spun the discs at a constant velocity and dragged a needle along the groove. No, we're not kidding. This was maybe about two or three weeks before we invented Fire™, the Wheel™, and the pinnacle of caveman technology, the Wheel on Fire™.

Our point being, of course, that vinyl is essentially a niche market these days; we're pretty sure that the only people still buying major-label music in that format are DJs and thawed-out neanderthals. About the only thing more distressing would be if iTMS revenues were also being outstripped by sales of 8-track tapes. (See, kids, about 88 million years ago, a fair amount of popular music was sold on... nah, forget it.)

Now, it's not like the situation is particularly dire or anything-- the article itself notes that iTMS's relatively teensy chunk of the recording industry's cheese is due in large part to the fact that the only people who can use it so far are Mac users, and the real story is that it's only open to Mac users in the U.S. who have credit cards and run Mac OS X 10.2. (We're fairly certain that DJs and thawed-out neanderthals do, indeed, outnumber us.) The numbers might shift in a big way when iTunes for Windows ships at the end of the year, but we felt it was an interesting statistic nonetheless. Meanwhile, we can get back to worrying about the little things-- like, are we going to hell for buying that copy of "Baby Got Back"?