Apple have announced on Thursday that its iTunes music download service has served over five times more downloads in its first week of launch compared with Napster's first week of its relaunch. Apple has sold 1.5 million songs in the first week of its iTunes service while Napster sold 300,000 during its first week of the relaunch. It is not clear if iTunes 1.5 million songs were sold during its first week of its Windows launch or the original Mac launch. iTunes has served over 17 million 99 cent song downloads since its original launch in April.
Apple's iTunes is still doing very well at present and have served over 80 percent of the market for legally purchased online music downloads last week. iTunes has the advantage that it is available to both Macintosh and Windows users while nearly all of the other legal download services are restricted to Windows users only. GristyMcFisty submitted the following article via our news submit:
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Cupertino, California-based Apple said that consumers purchased and downloaded 1.5 million songs from its iTunes Music Store during the same period that Napster reported selling 300,000 songs. Napster, the song-swap pioneer that revolutionized online music and turned the music industry upside down, was bought last year by Roxio Inc. in a bankruptcy auction. The revamped service opened for business Oct. 29. The company also cited data from Nielsen SoundScan showing that Apple's online music store had more than 80 percent of the market for legally purchased downloads last week. More than 17 million songs have been bought on iTunes at 99 cents each since the popular service was introduced in April. The iTunes software, which has the music store integrated into it, is now available for both Macintosh computers and those who use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. |
It is surprising how well iTunes is doing compared with all of the other legal download services. Roxio expected its Napster to be a real success as Napster was the original music file sharing network where users were able freely share and download music until Napster was shut down due to its legal issues. iTunes and Napster both offer similar advantages to their services. Both have near the same pricing, allow music to be recorded to CD and support transfer to certain portable music players. The only main difference is the software and audio codec. iTunes uses the fairly popular MPEG4 audio codec while Napster uses the controversial Windows Media codec. Both codec's are crippled with DRM to prevent sharing and unlimited CD recording.
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Source: Yahoo Technology News
