Remember how, when Apple announced that it had sold 50 million songs via the iTunes Music Store, the press jumped all over it saying that it had totally missed its one-year target of selling 100 million tracks? Of course, the folks reporting such things kindasorta neglected to note that 1) the 100 million-in-a-year figure was ratcheted way up from Apple's original target, which was to sell a million songs in six months; 2) the target date for the 100 million is April 30th, so there's still some time yet; and 3) Apple's 50 million song figure didn't include Pepsi-promo downloads (which the 100 million target does-- kudos to the BBC for subsequently correcting its article, by the way). Now, granted, Apple has since noted that Pepsi redemptions are wicked low, so it probably won't meet its lofty goal, but hey, things could be worse.

In fact, they could be much worse. For example, faithful viewer bo tipped us off to a Macworld UK article which reports that OD2, the "European digital music operator" owned by Peter Gabriel, has hit its own milestone: it sold "one million downloaded tracks in the first quarter 2004." Yes, one million. In the whole quarter. Keep in mind, people, the iTMS is currently selling about 2.5 million songs every week. Granted, Apple sells to the U.S. while OD2 sells to Europe, but still, we're talking about something like a 30:1 ratio, here. What's more, OD2 is thrilled with its numbers, because they "represent a doubling of its download business" compared to the previous quarter "and a massive ten-fold increase in sales" compared to the same quarter last year. So before you go boo-hooing about how the iTMS might sell "only" 70 million songs in its first year, just remember what the other guys' numbers look like.

Of course, it'll be a lot fairer to compare OD2-vs.-iTMS sales once the iTMS finally opens for business in Europe-- which we really hope happens soon, because Apple needs to gain all the ground it can before Microsoft starts trying to take over. Faithful viewer fabian sent us a CNET article about Redmond's "iPod killer," which is a technology that'll allow rented WMA music-- you know, from the all-you-can-listen monthly-fee subscription services-- to be played on portable music players. In other words, people who rent their music from Napster or MusicMatch or whatever will no longer be stuck listening to their music at home; they can pop anything they want on, say, a MuVo and take it along with them.

This is actually the first supposed threat to the iPod/iTMS powerhouse that makes us a little nervous. Whereas Steve's right that people like to own their music instead of renting it, consider what it'd be like if you could pay ten bucks a month to download as many songs from the iTMS as you liked and load them up on your iPod. For the cost of one album a month, you could have a pool of half a million songs to take with you. Now, since Apple doesn't offer that option, once Microsoft ships this technology ("as soon as July"), people might seriously start considering subscription services and non-iPod players to be a viable option-- maybe even the better option. Why would Joe Average go broke blowing all his cash on an iPod if he then still has to shell out another ten bucks per album for stuff to put on it?

So we're hoping that Apple is at least considering offering an unlimited monthly plan, just in case the market decides that portability makes the renting scenario far more attractive than it is now. If it isn't, and people swarm to the subscription services, it may not be long before Apple is happy about selling a whole million songs in a quarter.