Study: Apple iTunes Music Store dominates with 70 percent market share, second place Napster holds 1
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 01:07 PM EST"A new NPD Group study finds that the gap between paid music downloads and files acquired through peer-to-peer networks remains large," eMarketer reports. "Apple still dominates the US market, accounting for 70% of revenues in the paid music downloading industry. Napster comes in a distant second with 11%, followed by MusicMatch, RealNetwork and Wal-Mart, all with 6%. Wal-Mart is one of the newer entrants into the business, but they already have captured a decent chunk of market share thanks to their $0.88 downloads ($0.10 less than the others) and WalMart's well known brand name."
"Among these services, iTunes was the first out of the gate to sell single song downloads, and has profited from that early start, as well as an easy interface and the popularity of its sister product, the iPod digital music player. Digital music players, many of which are tied to certain services, are a major factor in the success of a paid music downloading service. Of course, these digital music players can also be used to play MP3s that are acquired, almost always illegally, through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks," eMarketer reports.
Full article here.
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Real has only 6%? OMG! With all the hoopla, promises, brags, and insults thrown to Apple and the iTunes store, this statistic should just about finish them off!