In November, Linux music player Amarok shipped with Magnatune support built-in.
As far as overall sales go, I'm very pleased as they've been strong and consistent.
Here are the stats:
- 473 albums sold through Amarok Since October 31st 2006 to April 20th 2007.
- representing $3579 in purchases
- after the visa processing fee is taken off the top, this is $3,198.84, which then means $320 for Amarok. Annualized, at this current rate, this should be around $1,000 a year for Amarok, and $10,000 for Magnatune, which is absolutely great, as I'm happy to support them.
- I expect that these numbers could easily be 2x to 3x more once the main Linux distros really start shipping with the magnatune support (Suse just started, Ubuntu is about to)
- the sales are very consistent -- a few albums sell because of Amarok almost every day, which suggests the feature is not viewed as a gimmick, but as something that is used regularly. The chart at the right shows how rock-solid reliable they are.
-john
I have just tried the Amarok support to purchase an album and it is indeed excellent. I did not try earlier as I was worried I could not choose which file format to get, I thought it that would download in MP3 and I use Ogg Vorbis. But you can choose the format, where to download *after* paying and the artwork is automatically downloaded too. May I suggest you ask the Amarok developers to say precisely that choosing the format is done after paying?
Posted by: JP Renaud | April 20, 2007 at 07:38 AM
Um, don't you mean $1000 for Amarok, $4500 for Magnatune, and $5500 for the artists whose works are sold? Or something like that...
Posted by: David Brown | April 20, 2007 at 07:51 AM
"Um, don't you mean $1000 for Amarok, $4500 for Magnatune, and $5500 for the artists whose works are sold?"
The Amarok 10% referral fee comes off the top, so on $3198 of sales (gross sales after visa fees) Amarok gets $320, and then Magnatune and the artist split 50/50 what's left (50% each of $2,880)
-john
Posted by: John Buckman | April 20, 2007 at 07:54 AM
Eager to see how sales via Rhythmbox compare (Magnatune integration is much more recent AFAIK, though is shipping with Ubuntu 7.04).
Posted by: | April 20, 2007 at 09:03 AM
I just discovered the Rhythmbox integration and was very excited! I did not like to have to use Amarok necessarily. The only negative thing is that it is too easy for me to buy music now. :-P
Cheers!
-Al
Posted by: Al Arduengo | May 25, 2007 at 08:29 AM
I actually used rhythmbox to do this, but hey, it's still awesome :D
Also, thankyou for letting .ogg be a downloadable format!
Posted by: Daniel Cohen | June 02, 2007 at 02:32 PM