Apple Controls 70% of Digital Music Sold; 28 Percent of All Music Sales

Apple’s iTunes music store controls a dominant share of the US digital music market with a 28 percent share of all music sold and 70 percent of all digital downloads. The NDP Group, a New York based market research firm, released its findings that iTunes’ share of retail digital download business in the US has increased by one percentage point since last year’s numbers to 70 percent. Both Walmart and Amazon hold the second place spot taking a 12 percent share of the total market for digital music and physical media sales. Amazon has increased its music market share by three percentage points, while Apple upped its share by four percent. The remaining digital music business is split among a number of smaller players, including Rhapsody and Napster with shares of 1%, 2%, or 3% shares. The key point here is that more than 80 percent of all digital downloads in the US are controlled by two major players; good for them, potentially not so good for us. A little bonus sociology lesson for all you readers, when the market is massively controlled by one or two large corporations instead of being dispersed through many corporations (called demassification) those corporation can make availability and prices whatever they want. Just look at how expensive OS’s got when Microsoft was the dominant computer developer. Source: ComputerWorld, AppleInsider