Apple now No.1 music retailer in U.S.

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By Philip DiStefano

Have you downloaded a song on iTunes recently? If so, you’ve helped Apple become the largest music retailer in the U.S. – on or offline. That’s right, Apple now sells more music than even Wal-Mart, and that includes Wal-Mart’s online music sales and their in-store sales combined.

According to the popular technology Web site Ars Technica, an internal memo recently circulated among some Apple employees listing the Top 10 music retailers in the U.S. Apple was number one, with 19 percent of all music sold, with Wal-Mart trailing behind at 15 percent. This information leaked to Ars Technica on April 2 and was confirmed by Apple the next day.

This is big news for Apple, having been only the fourth largest music retailer in the U.S. in January of last year. In the span of a year and a little over three months, they’ve managed to surpass Amazon, Best Buy and, finally, Wal-Mart.

Out of those retailers, Best Buy and Wal-Mart both have brick and mortar stores where they sell music, and although Apple does have retail stores, they only sell music through iTunes. Granted, Best Buy does not have a digital store; they have a partnership with Real through their Rhapsody subscription music service, which has about 1 percent of music sales.

Also, take into consideration that for most albums on iTunes, you can purchase individual tracks rather than being forced to purchase all of the music the album contains. If you buy a CD at Wal-Mart, you’re buying every track by default, so the music sold on iTunes was most likely music that people wanted to buy rather than music they were being forced to buy along with the one song they wanted.

Regardless, iTunes is the first solely digital music service to reach the top spot among music retailers. That’s a pretty big accomplishment for the company that in 1997, Dell CEO Michael Dell said he would “… shut [down] and give the money back to the shareholders.”

If the Internet wasn’t already solidified as a means of distribution for digital media, this will most likely prove to non-believers – particularly the suited, executive types at record labels who don’t believe that anything on the Internet is good – that the Internet is here to deliver your music, movies and TV shows right to your computer in a quick and effortless way, and it’s here to stay.

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Originally Published: Issue 603 - April 9, 2008

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