iTune rises from #4 to #2!
02.26.08 - 03:19pm
In spite of increasing competition from all sides iTunes has overtaken Best Buy and Target to become the second best selling music store in the U.S. for 2007. Only Wal-Mart remains standing against iTunes complete dominion.
iTunes now boasts over 6 million songs and its success is due to the continuing preference of consumers from CD’s to digital downloading. Over 1 million consumers did not buy a single CD in 2007 and teenagers jumped from 38 percent of non-buyers to 48 percent from 2006 to 2007. Just as the CD world is shrinking online downloading is jumping, rising almost 50 percent last year.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we see the same things continuing into 2008 because what our research is showing is that teens are continuing to check out on the CD,” said NPD analyst Russ Crupnick. NPD was the market research company that measured the unit volume to figure who was number none.
The number of online sales while high still has not overcome the loss of CD’s. Due to pirating of music and illegal file sharing overall music sales were still down 10 percent.
“The continued growth in legal download sites is encouraging, yet the industry struggles to improve the value of each digital customer,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. “With so many baby boomers and gen-Xers entering the market, there are certainly opportunities to sell more digital albums, promote older catalog titles, or create bundles that will raise revenues. In the near term that’s going to be the best means available to narrow the gap on dwindling CD revenues.
Apple says the they retain over 50 million iTunes customers and have sold over 4 billion songs in total. Christmas Day alone had over 20 million songs downloaded from iTunes.
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