iTunes Becomes No. 2 Music Retailer Despite Majors’ Efforts

noah | February 26, 2008 1:15 am

According to research by the NPD Group, the iTunes Store was the second-largest music retailer in the United States last year, behind only Wal-Mart. iTunes leapfrogged over Best Buy and Target–which came in second and third, respectively, to iTunes’ fourth place the last time the NPD Group conducted their music-buying survey–as paid downloading experienced an overall spike of 50% between 2006 and 2007. Those downloads now make up 10% of all music sales, although unsurprisingly the rise in downloads didn’t make up for the plunge experienced by CD tallies throughout the course of the year. Related to that, NPD is claiming that one million people just stopped buying CDs completely last year; maybe it’s because of my scouring Soundscan during the year, but does that number seem a bit low to anyone else? [Reuters; HT Chris Molanphy]

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