Oh this is genius. Amazon has only grown to the level it is at now because of it's affiliate programme. This itself could be the key.

I can see blogs, websites, and record companies changing their links to reference iTMS, rather than Amazon, to make a little cash, just like many, even corporate sites, link to Amazon with affiliate links now.

There are some very clever people at Apple - now they only have to take on MSN. Let's just hope they can outsmart them.

so... 125 million now? 100 million reached when... roughly 2 months ago? so 25 million in 2 months. not bad at all.

This isn't a dead cert. yet though remember. 50% of the market "belongs" to MS - via Napster, MyCokeMusic, the forthcoming Virgin etc. I certainly wouldn't want to risk money on it, but Apple have a very good chance.

I wonder what Apple can do to improve their chances, over and above what they are already doing?

Great strategy--and another Apple/iTunes first.

(Notice that you can also sell Apple hardware/software through the same program, not just tunes!)

Here's the one they missed, IMHO ...

Combine the Itunes Affliate program with the University program. Give the University a special version of iTunes that identifies the university particularly when students use it to connect and buy songs. Then the University gets the percentage, the same as affiliates do. That way the University is especially incentivized to encourage iTunes use, since they would then get a cut of it.

They could even put audio recordings of lectures, student news .. heck, even the campus radio station could be streamed via iTunes.

but you have to have a minimum of 1000 unique visitors a day to your site to be accepted. amazon lets anyone sign-up. ok, apple wants to exercise some control here, but they don't want to be too restrictive.

I was just going to post a question wondering if others sites had been rejected. Now I see why. Sigh. oh well.

This affiliate program is a great start and obviously the partnership with HP will carry its own inertia to keep the iPod and iTunes ahead of all of the MSoft players for awhile.

At some point Apple will have to license the DRM to others, though, I don't know where that "sweet spot" will be. Unlike with computers, Apple now has the volume discount advantage and should compete just fine with the rest of the industry on a level playing field ... as long as Microsoft doesn't get to integrate music at the OS level the way they have been trying the last few years with everything else.

With Europe coming up to speed and HP, the iTunes store servers will be really put to a test. Now if Apple can get into the India and China markets first.....ooooooo