Apple confirms leaked data: iTunes tops the charts
Apple has confirmed data leaked from an internal memo showing that it has become the largest music retailer in the U.S.
The iTunes Music Store is now the leading music retailer in the U.S.
(Credit: Apple)Earlier Thursday, Ars Technica reported that certain Apple employees had received an internal e-mail with the results of a study conducted by The NPD Group. NPD initially declined to comment on the data, citing the fact that it was leaked from Apple, but Apple distributed a press release Thursday afternoon confirming the data from NPD's MusicWatch survey.
Apple didn't include its market share in the release, but Ars reported that Apple had 19 percent of overall music sales in the U.S. during January, compared with Wal-Mart's 16 percent. Apple did say that its achievement was based on two months of data, from sales in January and February of this year.
One interesting note about NPD's MusicWatch survey is that it equates 12 tracks with the sale of one CD. iTunes generates a lot of one- or two-track purchases as compared with the purveyors of physical CDs, where you either buy the whole thing or you don't. All those 99-cent transactions apparently add up.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Apple made it Easy, affordable, and fun.
I get my CDs from Amazon.com.
the wheel.
I also listen to a LOT of music. My iTunes library has over 6500
tracks in it (roughly 400 cd's) and every one of them is loaded
onto my iPod.
Carrying the loaded iPod, I find to be both pleasurable and
practical, and it easily connects to my car's deck.
Would I prefer carrying 400 cd's in my car?
No thanks!
CDs, let alone where. If flurries of artists ceased to pad their albums
with filler content maybe, just maybe, more people would buy more
CDs than they do now. But in the end, the masses of the market
are king and the vast majority of people want products on their
terms. And iTunes gives them what they want.
It has been proven that the typical human being cannot tell the difference in quality between an AAC file at 128kbps and a CD. Unless you're running equipment that run in the thousands of dollar (which IMHO is a social problem), it is virtually impossible to tell the two apart. The human ear can only hear so much.
To boost this argument one notch further, there is evidence that a long-play vinyl record produces better quality than CDs. I don't see people buying LPs anymore. You would need a digital file the size of gigabytes to simulate a true sine wave generated by analog sound.
The bottom line is this: We all know that fans of the digital age is sacrificing quality for convenience. I'm seeing people ripping Blu-Ray videos to RealVideo. CDs to MP3 and AAC. Flash video over DivX or MPEG-4. The very low percentage of folks who prefer the best quality is no longer the focus group. Convenience and content delivery to the masses - that is the focus group.
title I have downloaded from iTunes plays crystal clear on any of my
stereo devices...
CD = scratches = skipping = poor quality sound
It doesn't matter what physical format is used - CD/DVD Audio or anything, the fact remains that MP3s etc. are lossy compressions.
Combine that with the losses due to the cassette tape adapters/FM connectors or even line-in jacks that are used with most ipods/mp3 players. You have to hear it to believe it.
As for the 650 CDs, a 260 GB hard drive should suffice to keep the songs as WAVs.
It is hard to match the quality of CDs/WAVs combined with co-ax/optical connections. I am waiting for a portable player that provides digital out jacks.
Must be another slow news day.
of All sales...now they are just plain number 1 of legal music
sales period. I bet the record companies who have been giving
Apple so much crap over their pricing practices are just freaking
out. It must be nice for all these record companies to get a
paycheck for doing nothing... no pressing, no jewel boxes, no
printing of CD sleeves, no shrink wrapping, no shipping costs...
but yet they still get paid for pimping the artists they don't
develop...
by the way, if you're a independent musician ... check out
www.tunecore.com so you too can get placed in the largest
music selling store in the world. By pass the "man" and own
your own music. Just another way that Apple is helping artists
get paid.
that were made using synths/MIDI etc. The difference becomes
apparent with music that is more acoustic (real) in nature. I've
engineered a few dozen albums, so I'm not your average listener.
Still, 256K or higher works for my 55 year old ears on most any
kind of music.
24bit at 96K or 192K......
- The future begins with "i"
- by the_thoughtful_blogger April 4, 2008 5:01 PM PDT
- iTunes is just the beginning. The future begins with "i". Don't believe me? Jump into the time machine and take a sneek peek at the year 2021:
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