“Some lucky music fan will hit the jackpot very soon. The person who downloads the 100 millionth song from Apple Computer’s iTunes online music store will win a sleek new laptop, an iPod digital music player and a gift certificate to download a further 10,000 songs,” Scott Morrison writes for The Financial Times.

“Generous? Certainly. But no amount of hype is too great for a company that has so much riding on the future of digital entertainment,” Morrison writes. “The iPod and iTunes have vaulted Apple to the forefront of the online music market, with an estimated 25 per cent share of the digital music player market and a 70 per cent share of legal downloads.”

Morrison writes, “But the market is in its infancy, online music services have proliferated and standards vary. Competitors appear to be closing in… unless it acts soon, Apple could see its commanding lead in digital music disappear. The risk is that history would repeat itself, with Apple again relegated to the fringes of a booming market.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Music is music. It is not software written for one OS or another. The Mac and its market share issues cannot be used as a guide for iPod. It is just as easy to encode music in one format as another. There is no need to develop a “version” of music for differing player platforms; hence, no massive extra development costs. Apple’s plan is sound and it is working spectacularly.