Interesting Digital Music Facts

Here are some interesting facts about digital music that have recently come available through various online research organizations.

• The Apple's iTunes Store has increased its market share in the digital music arena, capturing 69% of the digital music market during the first half of 2009, according to the NPD Group. The rest of the top five: Best Buy - 16%, Wal-Mart - 14%, and Target and Amazon MP3, both at 10%.

• The iTunes Store continues to dominate music retail, grabbing a 25% share of the overall market while selling 2 billion (with a "b") tracks during the first half of the year, according to an NPD report. Wal-Mart leads all retailers in physical CD sales with a 20 percent share of the physical music market, followed by Best Buy at 16 percent and Target and Amazon tied at 10 percent each.

• CDs still comprised of 65% of all music sold in the first half of the year compared to paid digital downloads, which comprised 35% of music sales. The digital segment is growing fairly rapidly though, since the split was 80%/20% in 2007.

And a bonus digital fact:

• The percentage of US internet users who have created a social network profile jumped from 43% in 2008 to 59% in 2009, according to Universal McCann's annual Social Media Tracker report cited by eMarketer. The U.S. easily led all nations in social networking activity, but 7 other countries polled had higher percentages of internet users with a social network profile. Russia came in first at 85.3% after registering just a 23.1% penetration rate in 2006.

What these facts tell us is that internet use and digital music consumption is on the rise and won't level off for a while. That being said, CDs are still a huge business and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.