Comments on: Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha No

By: Promenade » Blog Archive » How Apple Is Changing the PC Software World… Back

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:21:11 +0000

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Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:40:01 +0000

[...] Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha No [...]

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Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:26:03 +0000

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By: iTunes’ Content Pricing Not in Crisis — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

iTunes’ Content Pricing Not in Crisis — RoughlyDrafted Magazine — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:46:50 +0000

[...] Is Number Two Amazon Rivaling iTunes in Music Sales? Haha No From Vista to Zune: Why Microsoft Can’t Sell to Consumers Zune Sales Still In the Toilet I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. [...]

By: Ephilei

Ephilei — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:37:04 +0000

What was the former #2?

By: vaporland

vaporland — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:40:08 +0000

I believe that the iPod has the majority of “honest” music users, but that they just happen to be in the minority of overall iPod users.

Most people who I know that use the ITMS buy a LOT of stuff from there. They are afraid of illegal downloads and affluent enough to afford to buy music legally. They also are not technically savvy enough to figure out programs like Azureus and μTorrent. iTunes is easy and convenient for them.

All of the people who I know that pirate content, store that content on their iPods.

I believe that what happens is that a small number of iPod users make the majority of ITMS purchases, which averages out to the theoretical 25 songs per iPod.

I also believe that this means that the potential market for online music purchases is much larger than most people realize, if more aggressive prices for unprotected content were ever promoted online by the recording industry.

By: benlewis

benlewis — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:25:02 +0000

It seems to me that many of these questions are superfluous to some degree. We can extrapolate that three of every four DRM-free tracks are played on an iPod. Success for Amazon and eMusic supports Apple’s biz model. Daniel makes this point quite clearly in the essay. This may explain why Apple hasn’t been more aggressive about the obvious (and illegal) collusion.

By: harrywolf

harrywolf — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 06:48:22 +0000

Social networking will not make money and becomes banal and irritating pretty quick.
I dont think Apple need to be so obvious – the best networking is natural and usually isnt called ‘the social’…

Amazon sell tracks that are ALL compatible with the iPod/iPhone. Who cares how many they sell? They all end up on iPods.

Thing is, if you have an iPod (most of us do) and you therefore have iTunes – its likely you will buy your online music from Apple.

Perhaps Amazon should license an iPod with Amazon branding like HP did…that might help their sales.

The record biz wont recognise their stupidity until they are destroyed by it – thats the nature of hubris.

By: nat

nat — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:22:27 +0000

Thanks for the info Dan. That’s a crazy scheme and I don’t know how I feel about. If it required me to have my iPod plugged into my laptop any time I wanted to use AirTunes, it’d be irritating. Man, though, unlimited access to iTunes’ entire music library!? Very enticing.

By: danieleran

danieleran — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:53:18 +0000

@ lmasanti: thanks for the link.

“eMusic CEO David Pakman doesn’t accept a recent USA Today report which claimed Amazon to have become the second biggest incumbent in US digital music sales, after iTunes.

eMusic.com claims to be the second-largest digital music reseller behind iTunes. [...]

“… let’s get one thing straight: outside of iTunes, no one sells more music digitally than eMusic, and we don’t plan on giving up that title anytime soon,” writes Pakman in a blog entry.

Pakman said that USA Today’s claim is based on reports from representatives of the four major music labels, and that USA Today “believed that eMusic’s subscription model was not relevant to the story they wanted to tell.”

For a flat monthly fee, eMusic subscribers are able to download a set number of songs in MP3 format, unrestricted with any form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. By comparison, Amazon.com uses an “a la carte” method similar to the iTunes Store, charging users for individual tracks or albums.

Amazon.com hasn’t made sales data available, but Pakman indicated that eMusic sells “more than 7,000,000 songs a month.” Since Amazon.com’s MP3 store opened in September, he said, eMusic has sold 40 million tracks. Since November of 2003, eMusic.com has sold almost 200 million.

“These are huge numbers, and firmly back our claims to be the Number 1 site for independent music and the Number 2 digital music service after iTunes. Those declarations have not previously been disputed,” wrote Pakman.

Pakman said that his defense of eMusic’s position isn’t intended as a slight to Amazon, who he calls “a pioneer in the world of ecommerce.”

“But in terms of digital music, we are still on top, and will continue to be so. If we ever decide to start selling blenders, we’ll be sure to give them a call,” said Pakman.”