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iTunes More Popular Than Most P2P Sites

Posted by Zonk on from the paying-its-way dept.

bonch writes "A study by NPD Group shows that iTunes ranks #2 in popularity of music downloads, rivaling services like Limewire, Kazaa, and iMesh. The #1 service was still WinMX, but NPD believes this proves to the music industry that legal downloads can work, and that iTunes provides an economically viable alternative." From the article: "According to NPD, about 4 percent of Internet-enabled households in the nation used a paid music download store in March."

2 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. even completely independent music sells VERY well by linuxbaby · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My company is one of the main distributors of music to Apple iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, etc.

    I gotta admit that when we started doing digital distribution two years ago, I thought it would be just a small income stream for the musicians - some extra income, maybe $5k/month combined.

    But our checks from Apple et al have been over $300,000 a month so far this year! And that's just for our catalog of mostly-unknown all-independent music. (And hey for the record, 91% of all that income goes directly to the musician.)

    NOTE: a lot of this discovery of independent music is thanks to cover songs - another twist I never expected.

    Yes us alpha-geeks here on Slashdot may get our music from allofmp3.com or SoulSeek or whatever, but there's definitely millions paying that 99-cents-per song, or $20/month subscription out there. I get to see the detailed sales reports every month.

    (Personally, I'm so impressed with Yahoo Music Unlimited, that it's making me want to use Windows again!)

  2. .Apple restored my music from stolen laptop by NextAdvantage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I called apple asking if I could restore music I purchased from itunes after my laptop got stolen and they let me do a one time re-download. Tell me that when your cd's got stolen from your car tower records let you have new cd's... I thought that was pretty cool. :)