According to industry analysts at the NPD group, a quarter of all music purchased in the United States is bought from Apple's iTunes, making iTunes by far the largest retailer of music in the country. Walmart is second with 14 % of music sales (that's both in-stores and online), while Best Buy is third. Coming in at number 34,326 is Amoeba music in Hollywood, which I mention here because it 215% more awesome than iTunes, Best Buy and Walmart combined.
CD sales made up 65 percent of all music sold during 2009, but digital sales are very quickly nipping at CDs heels. Eight-track sales made up .000034 % of music sales, mostly through hipsters ironically purchasing Kenny Rogers The Gambler in thrift stores.
Analysts think digital music sales may surpass physical CD sales by the end of 2010. In order to do so, online sales need to increase by 20 percent and CD sales need to drop by 20 percent.
In other news, some people actually buy music! But seriously...It seems to me that Apple has succeeded here for the right reasons: The iTunes experience is much better than, say, Amazon's. Combining a music player, store and portable devices seamlessly works really well... but the reason iTunes is sort of lame is that it doesn't support the FLAC format in favor of Apple's own, proprietary lossless format, but you can't buy music in lossless format in iTunes. I'd pay extra to have better quality copies of some songs.
