iTunes in Top 10 U.S. Music Retailers

[MacRumors]

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An NPD Press release is making headlines around the Mac web.

According to The NPD Group, in Q3 2005, Apple's iTunes Music store made its way into the Top 10 list of U.S. retailers based on "equivalent number of units sold". (Number in parenthesis are 2004's Q3 position)

1. Wal-Mart (1)
2. Best Buy (2)
3. Target (3)
4. Amazon.com (4)
5. FYE (10)
6. Circuit City (Tied for 5)
7. Apple\iTunes (14)
8. Tower Records (Tied for 7)
9. Sam Goody (Tied for 5)
10. Borders (9)

NPD used 12 tracks per album in order to compare sales between physical CDs and individual tracks.

[Lacero]

Awesome. Long time it hasn't been already included. Next milestone target: surpassing Amazon.

Also link from zdnet:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5965314.html

[iDM]

I would have assumed that this was the case anyway, but it's nice to actually see it!

[dlastmango]

Walmart is cheapest arent they?... so if Apple inroduces variable pricing they will no longer be on the chart...

Just my 2 cents.

[BornAgainMac]

This means a lot of people still buy music the old fashion way.

[ibook30]

Hopefully this will give apple more juice when negotiating with the recording industry. (more apple juice!)

[SPUY767]

here's the gig folks. This is flawed data. People are counting every CD as the rough equivalent of 12 iTMS tracks. The reasons that this is borked are A) note every CD Has 12 Tracks, Lots have Less, B) The data counts CDs that people buy for only one Track as 12 Tracks, and C) It vcounts iTunes Purchased albums as the actual Number of Tracks instead of the Default 12. Granted, C is peobably just as well since just as many albums have more than 12 Tracks as Have less. With iTMS people have the option to skip those tracks therefore artificially deflating the iTunes Numbers. If there were some way to Track it, which there isn't, and it were possible to make an Apples to Apples comparison, no pun intended, Apple's rank would jump by 1 or 2 spots at least. Punching Out.

[bigandy]

nae bad, nae bad...

[AoWolf]

So this must include CD's sold too right? If thats pretty amazing.

[lifeboy001]

Originally Posted by SPUY767

here's the gig folks. This is flawed data. People are counting every CD as the rough equivalent of 12 iTMS tracks. The reasons that this is borked are A) note every CD Has 12 Tracks, Lots have Less, B) The data counts CDs that people buy for only one Track as 12 Tracks, and C) It vcounts iTunes Purchased albums as the actual Number of Tracks instead of the Default 12. Granted, C is peobably just as well since just as many albums have more than 12 Tracks as Have less. With iTMS people have the option to skip those tracks therefore artificially deflating the iTunes Numbers. If there were some way to Track it, which there isn't, and it were possible to make an Apples to Apples comparison, no pun intended, Apple's rank would jump by 1 or 2 spots at least. Punching Out.

Lots have more than 12 tracks too, you can't just use data that suits your argument. One of the biggest recent sellers was Kanye West's new CD which sported 23 tracks. I think anywhere between 10-12 is a valid average, and I'm sure they did the research to back it up.

Along those lines, we understand iTunes sells singles and regular retailers do not. It does not discount the results that have been posted by any means; this is merely a ranking of sales. Should we have to include price comparisons too? Borders regularly sells CD's in the $18 range while you can get them for $10 on iTunes. This however, was not the point of the article.

[devilot]

Originally Posted by dlastmango

Walmart is cheapest arent they?... so if Apple inroduces variable pricing they will no longer be on the chart...

Just my 2 cents.

Apple's iTMS has a wide selection and I'm willing to bet that they have more songs/CDs (as well as less mainstream but still greatly loved artists) than Walmart carries.

[Lacero]

Originally Posted by devilot

Apple's iTMS has a wide selection and I'm willing to bet that they have more songs/CDs (as well as less mainstream but still greatly loved artists) than Walmart carries.

Walmart and brick & mortar stores of their kind are dying because they only stock the most popular mainstream music. It gets expensive to store and display millions of songs. With something like iTMS, it follows the Amazon.com model of selling fewer songs from a much more diverse selection.

[iMeowbot]

Originally Posted by dlastmango

Walmart is cheapest arent they?... so if Apple inroduces variable pricing they will no longer be on the chart...

Most of the Wal-Mart sales are in their B&M stores. In the US market under discussion here, it helps to keep in mind that less than half of households have broadband yet. Not just the downloads, but also the authorization gets to be annoying when you are stuck with dialup (as I've been for the last week as the local telco churns through trouble tickets and keeps managing not to find what's wrong ). Add to that the buyers without up-to-date home computers (or any computers), and that's a heck of a lot of customers Apple aren't even attempting to reach. (And of course Wal-Mart do use variable pricing on CDs while retaining that top sales spot.)

[amateurmacfreak]

Originally Posted by dlastmango

Walmart is cheapest arent they?... so if Apple inroduces variable pricing they will no longer be on the chart...

Just my 2 cents.

yeah, and wal-mart is the most awful, greedy corporation so...that sucks.... it would be so cool if itunes could move up a bit... and wal-mart down, haha. i wonder where limewire would be if you compared the number of stuff people get from the other sources to it... it would probably be right on up there.
if itunes does variable pricing, people that are computer people will probably turn to limewire, and just more of the general public will switch to best buy, wal-mart...
it would overall hurt the record companies and itunes i think.

[iEric]

That's great.

And just watch to see iTunes drop if multi-leveled pricing occurs.
DROP DROP DROP.

I for one would love to see that so music company execs that pushed for multi-leveled pricing can shove it up their...