Meanwhile, how about that there Jobsian iTunes Music Store anniversary conference call, hmmmmm? MacMinute has some nice coverage of what went down, just in case you were off somewhere busily being not-an-analyst or something. We don't want to go into it all in too much depth, but the big news is the official first year's sales tally: the iTMS officially cleared about 70 million songs in its first year in business. That's nothing to sneeze at, especially if you remember that before the launch, Apple's goal was to sell one million songs in the first six months. 70 million in a year pretty much blows that initial target all to pieces; as Steve put it, "a year ago, if someone had predicted 70 million songs sold, they would have been laughed out of the building."

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that Apple's most recently revised goal was to sell 100 million songs by, well, today-- and the last we checked, 70 is rather less than 100. (Thank you, college degree!) And while sites like The Register are perfectly right to report that "Apple undershot its first-year iTunes Music Store download target by 30 million songs," we thought it was overstating things a bit to claim that Steve had "forecast sales of 100 million songs." A goal, especially one that Steve called "a really high bar," is not quite the same thing as a "forecast." After all, our goal down here at the AtAT compound is to conquer and enslave the entire western hemisphere by Labor Day, but that doesn't mean we actually expect it to happen.

Okay, so that takes care of our weak apologist excuses; now let's move on to assigning blame! Remember when Steve admitted that Apple just wasn't going to hit that 100 million song target in part because of a lame response to the Pepsi promo? At the time we tossed together a few numbers and determined that Apple would sell 65 million songs directly, but Steve was expecting only 5 to 10 million winning yellow caps would actually be redeemed. Well, guess what? Our predictive math was correct. Faithful viewer neopod pointed us toward a CNET article which confirms that "about 5 million free songs have been given away through a Pepsi promotion, far fewer than the 100 million tracks that could have been redeemed."

Apple admits that the response to the Pepsi promo wasn't anywhere near as strong as it'd hoped, and largely blames the redemption shortfall on those pesky distribution problems (which kept yellow-capped bottles out of L.A., for example, until the final two weeks of the promo period). We, on the other hand, have decided to blame all of you guys.

Yes, you. C'mon, you knew weeks and weeks ago that Pepsi downloads were way lower than Apple wanted, and yet you didn't immediately run out and guzzle 37.5 gallons of sugar water apiece in order to score your maximum 200 free songs. And not having any game pieces in your area is no excuse; whatever happened to the grand tradition of a seven-hour road trip into friendlier Pepsi promo territory just for the sake of lending Apple a hand? Face it: you could've done more to prevent Apple from facing this embarrassment. A lot more.

What did we do to turn things around? Well, once we finally found yellow-capped Sierra Mist in Cambridge, we bought one.

It, uh, didn't win.

Still, we made an effort. See? So don't go blaming us.