iTunes Market Share is 0.1%?

[dubstylee]

P2PNet has an interesting take on iTunes success/failure:

In a story about Apple's latest marketing puff-piece, that it's opening its costly iTunes in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, p2pnet points out that iTunes sales don't feature stacked against what's happening in the real world of online music.

"Somebody could usefully do some numerical analysis on all this," suggests Julian Bond in a commment post, going on:

"The Big Champagne Top 10 typically shows 5-6 million downloads per week for each track.

"So just the top 10 is ~50 million a week and so ~2,500 million a year.

"The total download market must be at least 10 times this. Maybe 100 times. And possibly even 1,000 times as it's a very long, flat tail.

"So let's say 100 times. That's 250,000 Million. So between two and three orders of magnitude bigger than iTMS.

"Put that another way, iTMS has between 0.1% and 1% market share.

"Doesn't look so important now, does it?

"Just Say No To DRM."

[Roamerick]

I'm not sure who's more moronic: The guy who wrote it or the guy who posted it here. Either way... Don't bother next time.

[rebirth]

but I like iTMS.

[Abyss00]

DRM infected music will always be a failure.

[ducttapeBigSexy]

So.... they're saying that peopple would rather get music for free then pay for it? Wow - never thought that would happen!

Seriously, I figure record labels are looking at it this way - either A) Make no money from the Internet or B) Make a little money from the Internet. Doesn't take a genius to figure out which one they'd choose. Not to mention I site the fact that I know a lot of people (myself included) download music we'd never pay for. Which, in turn, brings these numbers up.

[Ardor]

I'm not sure who's more moronic: The guy who wrote it or the guy who posted it here. Either way... Don't bother next time.

Agreed, this article looks like it was written by a 12-year old. A market is a a place where goods get exchanged, with the objective that the manufacturer (in this case the musician and his peeps) gets monetary returns for his goods. This is not that case, meaning that the p2p-exchange is an illegal one and does not count. So of the *legal* market, iTunes has a much higher marketshare, competing with other venues where music is being exchanged for actual barter (most often known as money). Then there's the whole discussion of a new market (where goods get sold for the 1st time) and a replacement market (second-hand exchanges, also the stockmarket in a way), which is being ignored. And as legislation keeps growing, so does the legal market, meaning that the so-called 99.9 % (source for these statistics btw?) is a declining one at best.

Not to say that I don't download. But I know that what I do is steal 100 % from artists and am willing to pay the price for it as soon as I am caught. I don't bother covering it up with senseless statistics.

[deshman]

damn zeropaid....you are REALLY letting yourself go...