Amazon & Walmart Tie For #2 U.S. Music Retailer
iTunes Still #1 As Digital Grows
iTunes continued to be the top retailer of music with 28% of all music purchased by U.S. , up 4% since Q1 2009 according to researcher NPD. Amazon gained 3% to tie Walmart's shrinking music department for second position at 12%
Sales of digital tracks and albums accounted for 40% overall music sales in the first quarter of 2010, up 5% from Q1 2009.*
When reviewing sales of digital music separately from CDs, NPD found that iTunes’s share of the digital-music download market has remained essentially flat since Q1 2009 – growing just 1% to 70% of the digital music market last quarter. At the same time, AmazonMP3 grew by 4% to reach 12% while Amazon’s share of the CD market grew 2% to 11%.
"Amazon’s growth reflects a stronger position in both the CD and digital
formats,” said Russ Crupnick, VP of NPD. “This dual-pronged approach of
selling both digital music and CDs helps attract the most valuable and
committed music buyer who prefers access to both formats.”
Walmart led U.S. CD purchases in Q1 2010 with a 17% share of the retail market. Best Buy followed Walmart with 14%, Amazon’s 11 percent share positioned them in third place.
* NPD’s data is based on a combined music-retailer ranking that reflects
the combined sales of CDs and digital music downloads (i.e., 12 digital
music track downloads are equivalent to one CD).
Is the list of Top Ten retailers from the NPD study available without infringing on NPD’s proprietary report?
I’m just curious. Target isn’t mentioned; NPD listed them as a Top Ten CD retailer a few years back. Most of the other former Top Ten music retailers not mentioned here are either closed, or making slashing cuts to the remaining CD stock.
Does eMusic measure at all?
I’m still surprised Amazon’s share hasn’t risen more than that. There’s little reason not to buy from them and one huge reason to – better prices and better deals. Apple knows this is an issue and the way they responded to amazon’s mp3 daily deal was to try and stop it rather than having deals of their own. That’s why I’ll stick with Amazon and hopefully others will as well. I track their daily mp3 deal with the following site and google gadget that lets you preview/listen and track the deal real easily – http://www.frugalgadgets.com/amazon-mp3-daily-deal.php
http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=http://www.frugalgadgets.com/AmazonMP3DailyDeal/AmazonMP3DailyDeal.xml (google gadget)