iTunes solidifying grip on music business
updated 11:10 am EDT, Tue April 8, 2008
Ipsos: Hard grip by iTunes
Research firm Ipsos has released a new study on the digital music industry, the results of which position Apple as the leader. Some 82 percent of American music downloaders are familiar with iTunes, versus a next-best figure of 76 percent for Napster. Some 38 percent of downloaders think of iTunes first when it comes to digital music, and while most major online outlets have had their name recognition increase during 2007, only iTunes showed a substantial growth in use past the first 30 days, up to 24 percent last year from 18 percent in 2006. Services such as Rhapsody and Walmart.com saw their 30-day-plus use decrease.
The number of people who view iTunes as the best music service increased from 41 to 50 percent, giving it overwhelming dominance, as Napster remained in second place despite miniscule popularity of just 10 percent.
Of note is that the social networking site MySpace, which has featured free music streaming and downloads for some time, has seen its popularity decline despite an increasing number of people being aware of its existence. The company recently announced the beginnings of MySpace Music, a site which will put tracks from Warner, Universal and Sony BMG up for commercial sale.
iTunes Plus
04/08, 11:29am reply
It would be even more popular if the labels play fair with iTunes and allow DRM free. A sale is a sale in my book.
slapppy
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Joined: Mar 2008
napster?
04/08, 12:19pm reply
Are they still around? I thought they closed shop again to retool their business model.
testudo
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Joined: Aug 2001
Rhapsody
04/08, 12:23pm reply
If you only judge Rhapsody as a store, sure, I'd think their sales would go down because they are using one of the those MS never-really-sure-if-it-will-play DRM formats and I personally not only can't use that but I'm avoiding DRM as much as possible. I'll go look at Amazon first ahed of ITS for better price or DRM-free music.
That said Rhapsody subscription base is not mentioned here. I honestly wonder how well subscriptions are going. Rhapsody's inventory is probably between 5 and 6 million by now. And they are gaining the subscriber bases os services like Yahoo as recently as a couple months ago.
JackWebb
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Joined: Aug 2007
let's say....
04/08, 01:18pm reply
Ipsos surveyed 100 people [family feud style] and all those 100 people owned Zunes and bought their music from wherever Zune folks "buy" music - then let's re-run those stats_
So how does 1,826 people represent the whole of 350 million americans ? Maybe if this had been 1,826 members of the House of Representatives and it had more to do with general laws and policies I'd agree_ But those folks don't speak for everyone_
Got to love idiots and their made up data_
UberFu
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Joined: Oct 2002
Sample size
04/08, 01:37pm reply
According to texts I have here that deal with sample sizes for surveys of this nature, 1826 people is valid to the degree Ipsos specified.
Chris Hutcheson
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Joined: Oct 2000
assuming these people...
04/09, 12:02am reply
...weren't polled on their way out of an apple store, 1826 people is a huge sample size, statistically. this also assumes the people polled were properly selected, but then that's what survey companies exist to do.
and uberfu, your population number for the US is waaaay off, by like 50 million. and even if you were right, are you really silly enough to think that ANY survey asks every damn person in the country and tallies these results?
we call these "censuses", and they're such a massive undertaking that even the federal gov't only does it once a decade.
get a grip.
rtbarry
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