Despite Coca-cola's Mycokemusic claiming to be the leading online download service in Europe just a few days ago by selling 500,000 tunes over 2 months, Apple iTunes has now announced to have provided 800,000 downloads in just its first week following its recent launch. About 450,000 were downloaded in the UK alone; 16 times more than OD2 in the UK.
While iTunes has been a big success in its first week, other music services such as Napster are still pleased with their current sales. iTunes pricing is currently 79p a pop in the UK, however this is still a loss-making service despite being more expensive than its US version as Apple uses its store to promote its iPod player.
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Apple today said that its European iTunes Music Store had sold almost that number in its first week. The exact total is somewhere just over 800,000, more than half of which (450,000) were downloaded in the UK. To be fair, Apple gave away the best part of 20,000 songs at ITMS' launch last week, and since they were provided through its regular gift voucher mechanism rather than special offer codes, they'll almost certainly count toward the total. Not that they may all have been redeemed yet. Apple also drew a comparison with OD2, which yesterday announced its acquisition by US digital music distie Loudeye, claiming that the UK weekly sales total of 450,000 was 16 times more than OD2 shipped: over 28,100 songs. Read the full story here. |
I think Mycokemusic either stepped in too-early or did not want to wait to see how iTunes gets on before still claiming to be Europe's market leader. We can see now that a lot of music lovers willing to take on legal download services were waiting all along for iTunes to start in the UK.
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Source: The Register - eCommerce
