Say, remember all those pundits and analysts who lined up behind Roxio to agree that the iTunes Music Store's biggest threat was the return of Napster? Remember how they said that Napster's household name gave it a "monster competitive advantage" over Apple's service because it had the "biggest brand in the online music business?" Remember dire predictions of the iTMS's post-Napster collapse and an unshaven Steve Jobs resorting to selling pencils in a tin cup outside the gas station on the corner of DeAnza Boulevard and Pacifica Drive while wearing nothing but one of those barrels with the bottom cut out held on by two suspender-straps over the shoulders?

Okay, it's possible we may be imagining that last one. But how about this: do you remember when we predicted that Napster's brand awareness wouldn't much help Roxio's online service, since the way people know it is as a downloadable music service that was 1) free, 2) illegal, and 3) eventually bankrupt (and not just morally)? Since the new "Napster" isn't really Napster, people who get reeled in by the name are just going to go away feeling cheated. You know, kind of like when The Velvet Underground toured without Lou Reed.

Well, it looks like we may have been at least partially correct, since faithful viewer Darcy informs us that Apple is officially gloating: a press release announces that while the born-again Napster sold a mere 300,000 songs in its first week of Life Part II, the iTMS sold five times that many in the same period-- a whopping million and a half songs over the course of the same seven days.

Of course, even without the explicit Napster smackdown this is good news; prior to the advent of iTunes for Windows, the iTMS had been selling about 600,000 songs a week, which means that Apple more than doubled its sales rate by shipping the Windows version-- and once the Pepsi promotion launches in February (and the even bigger McDonald's one kicks in, assuming the rumors are true), iTunes will be everywhere. And we do mean everywhere. You'll be finding strands of it in your soup. Don't swallow them, though. (Seriously, they're not good for you. Partially hydrogenated something-or-other.)

The reason why we say we were "at least partially correct" is because Napster's brand apparently did help it outsell the other downloadable music services-- just not Apple's. What we find especially interesting is that if Apple's 1,500,000 songs represents "over 80 percent market share" during Napster's debut week (note that we said "if," since the SoundScan market share numbers are for "last week" and Napster's first week started last Wednesday, so this is admittedly fudging things a bit), then once you subtract out Napster's 300,000 songs, that means all of the other music services combined only sold another 75,000. That would mean that Apple sold twenty times as many songs as BuyMusic.com, MusicMatch, and whoever else out there may be peddling tunes, all lumped together.

Sheesh. Suppose Scott Blum's feeling a little stupid yet? So much for the "200 million to 300 million" songs he said he'd sell in the first year. We all knew he was a world-class grade-A dork, but for the good of the species he really should be preventing from breeding since he blew $40 million on BuyMusic's ad campaign (one mocking iTunes, no less) and the service is now probably selling, at most, no more than $80,000 worth of songs per week. Gee, that means he'll get his marketing money back in a mere ten years-- assuming, of course, that he has a 100% profit margin. (Hey, doesn't everyone?)