Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

One in Four Songs in U.S. Bought on iTunes

by Caleb Johnson on August 19, 2009 at 01:30 PM

Although digital music sales continue to rise, CDs still account for the market majority in the U.S. When it comes to the burgeoning online world, though, iTunes stands alone.

Macworld writes that a recent report released by NPD Musicwatch showed that 25-percent of the songs purchased in the United States during the first months of 2009 came from the iTunes store. That makes iTunes the most popular music retailer in the country, beating out former champ Wal-Mart, which boasts 14-percent. (That figure, though, includes Wally World's sales from its retail stores, Web site and download store.) iTunes's market share is up from 21-percent in 2008 and 14-percent in 2007. Not only has Apple seen a steady climb in overall sales, but it's also trouncing direct competition -- owning 69-percent of the digital market. In second place is Amazon, which claims about 8-percent of MP3 purchases.

With iTunes' ease of use and the continued push towards the digitalization of music, it comes as no surprise that Apple is dominating. Yet, the continued reliance on CDs, 65-percent of all music sold in this country, is interesting and suggests Americans still need an actual product. Digital music takes a larger share out of sales every year -- 20-percent in 2007, 30-percent in 2008, 35-percent in 2009 -- but in the era of file-sharing, Internet radio, and iTunes, we wouldn't have guessed that CDs still hold this much ground. [From: Macworld, via TUAW]

Tags: apple, cd, digital music, DigitalMusic, itunes, mp3, music, song, top

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular