Apple's iTunes overtakes Amazon in overall music sales
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Blog: No.3 Apple trails only Wal-Mart and Best Buy in the first quarter of 2007.
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CUPERTINO, CaliforniaâOctober 14, 2004âAppleÂ® today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 150 million songs from the iTunesÂ® Music Store, marking another major milestone for the online music business.
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Come Super Bowl Sunday, Amazon.com will get a leg up in the digital music race it's running against Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. And not just any leg: Justin Timberlake's leg.
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Apple Inc.&#39;s digital music store  iTunes is now the third-largest music retailer in the United  States with 10 percent market share, overtaking Amazon.com in  the first quarter, according to a survey released on Friday.
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Apple Computer Inc.'s fourth quarter earnings soared on strong sales of laptop computers and its popular iPod music players, helping the company notch its highest revenue for the quarter in nine years. -AP
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Apple Inc.&#39;s  iTunes Music  Store is now the third largest retailer of music in the United  States, overtaking Amazon.com in the first quarter with nearly  10 percent market share, according to a survey by NPD Group.
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TechWeb - iTunes is now the third-largest music retailer in the United States with 10 percent market share, overtaking Amazon.com in the first quarter, according to a new survey.
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Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store is now the third largest retailer of music in the United States, overtaking Amazon.com in the first quarter with nearly 10 percent market share, according to a survey by NPD Group.
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Amazon.com has added songs from Warner Music Group to the range it sells as MP3 files without DRM (digital rights management), the companies said Friday.The online retailer&#160;launched its music download service&#160;in September and now offers 2.9 million songs without copy prevention technology, including tracks from Warner, EMI, Universal, and 33,000 independent record labels -- although it has still not won over Sony BMG, the only one of the music majors still insisting on the use of DRM.Warner said it also planned to offer album bundles including exclusive tracks through the Amazon service.The move is a blow to Apple&#39;s iTunes Store, which has only persuaded EMI and a handful of independent labels to let it offer their tracks in the&#160;DRM-free iTunes Plus format it launched in May. The rest of the songs available through iTunes come with digital limitations on where they can be played, or how many times they can be burned to a CD.Three formats dominate the market for online music sales: MP3 and AAC, which are both open formats, and WMA, a proprietary format owned by Microsoft.MP3 files do not include provision for DRM: music recorded in that format will play on most digital music players, many mobile phones, and in software readily available for all the major operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, opening up a huge potential market to Amazon and to other online music stores such as eMusic dealing in unprotected MP3 files.AAC is the format Apple chose for its iTunes Store. Most of the 6 million tracks in its catalog come wrapped in a proprietary DRM layer called FairPlay, although EMI and independents such as Sub Pop, Nettwerk, IODA and The Orchard also allow it to offer higher quality AAC recordings without DRM. The DRM-encumbered tracks will play on authorized iPods, iPhones, PCs, and Macs -- but won&#39;t play on digital music players from other vendors. Unprotected AAC files will also play on many mobile phones, PCs running Linux with the appropriate software, and even Microsoft&#39;s Zune digital music player.WMA files without DRM will play on PC or Macs using Windows Media Player, and some phones and digital music players -- although typically not on the same ones that play AAC files. Microsoft has also introduced a range of DRM systems enabling online stores to sell locked WMA files -- and later abandoned some of them, leaving a certain amount of confusion and doubt about whether devices and songs branded &quot;PlaysForSure&quot; really will play for sure.Industry executives expect initiatives such as iTunes Plus and Amazon MP3, which remove the DRM locks placed on music downloads by an earlier generation of music services, will encourage consumers to buy more music.Warner believes that giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own will only encourage more sales of music, it said Friday.It may also persuade music-buyers to look at other brands of digital music player such as the Zune range from Microsoft, ending Apple&#39;s dominance of that market segment.With the locks off the music, Apple also faces the prospect of a price war with Amazon, which offers 1 million of its MP3 tracks for just $0.89, compared to the $0.99 Apple charges for all its tracks. Before the launch of Amazon MP3, Apple also charged a $0.30 premium for tracks in the iTunes Plus format, which is recorded at a higher quality than the DRM-encumbered versions. Other Amazon tracks sell for $0.99.
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Amazon.com has begun a new chapter in its battle for customers&#39; ears: it has agreed to pay $300 million for Audible, a seller of audio books that has a close relationship with Apple.Ten-year-old Audible sells spoken-word content such as audio books, magazines, and radio programs through a number of channels, including its Web sites in the U.S. and U.K. It has 80,000 titles in its catalog, and a further 20,000 through partner sites in France and Germany.Amazon began reselling Audible&#39;s content in 2000, and since 2002, Audible has also distributed audio books through Apple&#39;s iTunes Store, when it became Apple&#39;s exclusive supplier of spoken-word content. Apple modified the software in its iPods to allow &quot;bookmarking&quot; of Audible audio files.This chapter in the battle for listeners may yet have a happy ending for Apple, as the Audible team plans to continue and grow its relationship with the iTunes Store, according to Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener. But that goes for Audible&#39;s many other channel partnerships too: &quot;We plan to continue and grow all these relationships,&quot; Herdener said.Apple declined to comment on the deal.The main battle front between Apple and Amazon remains the sale of digital music free of the restrictions imposed by DRM (digital rights management) systems, where Amazon has been competing with Apple in the U.S. since September.When Apple opened its iTunes Store, the music it sold was wrapped in a layer of DRM to prevent copying, which incidentally tied the music to Apple&#39;s iPod players and iTunes software.Some record companies were unhappy that Apple limited the sales to its players in this way, and last May&#160;Apple began offering tracks from EMI without DRM&#160;for a small premium, later bringing the price down to the same $0.99 it charges for other tracks with DRM.&#160;Amazon joined the fray&#160;in September, selling music from EMI and Universal in MP3 format, without DRM,&#160;adding tracks from Warner to its catalog&#160;in December. It now offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks, compared to 2 million DRM-free tracks in Apple&#39;s iTunes Store. Apple offers millions more tracks with DRM.Audible&#39;s audio books are wrapped in a layer of DRM, which Amazon does not plan to remove unless customers start to complain, Herdener said.&quot;Each media marketplace has its own business dynamics,&quot; he said.Amazon recently moved into the electronic book market with the launch of its Kindle e-reader, a device for downloading and displaying electronic books. Kindle also plays audio files, including those sold by Audible, making it a (much bulkier) competitor to the iPod.The $300 million price tag for Audible includes the assumption of outstanding stock option obligations. The companies expect to close the deal by April.
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Amazon.com  has signed on  Warner Music Group  to its music download service, which  aims to compete with Apple's  industry-dominating  iTunes online store.
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Apple today launched the iTunes Store in New Zealand, giving New Zealanders access to outstanding local music and the same innovative features, breakthrough pricing and seamless integration with iPod that have made iTunes the most popular music jukebox and online music store in the world. Apple today also opened the online Apple Store New Zealand, where customers can quickly and conveniently purchase Appleâs complete lineup of innovative products.
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The U.S. music industry is becoming  more open-minded about working with online music stores from  the tiniest start-up to Amazon.com , hoping to boost  digital music sales and erode the dominance of Apple Inc's   iTunes.
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A report on Apple iTunes by U.S.-based market consultant Forrester Research has found that the online music and video store recorded a major drop in sales.  Daily Variety said the report on more than 2,700 U.S.
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Eight of the top 10 MP3 players sold on Amazon are iPod models.
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Apple has sold over 150 million songs through its iTunes Music Store, the company announced last night. iTunes users are now downloading more than 4 million songs per week, a rate of over 200 million songs per year.
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Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched its much-anticipated digital music store Tuesday with nearly 2.3 million songs, none of them protected against copying.