Apple iTunes outselling traditional music stores!

Apple iTunes outselling traditional music stores!

This news comes as something of a shocker. Apple sells more than a million songs from their Apple iTunes digital music store on a daily basis. And this has taken them past some of the very popular music stores including Tower Records or Borders. This was revealed in a survey report by the analyst firm NPD Group. They track downloads from digital music stores along with people’s purchasing habits at offline retail stores.

The company said in its report that Apple iTunes made it to the U.S. Top 10 sales list for the first time. NPD industry analyst Russ Crupnick said in a statement: “Taking their growth and others’ pain, it’s not inconceivable to see them cracking into higher ground in the foreseeable future.” In fact, sales on Apple iTunes is contributing a significant part to the revenue figures of some of the biggest music labels in the market.

As per figures released by the Recording Industry Association of America, digital sales accounted for slightly more than 4 percent of the market during the first half of 2005. This was a smallish improvement from about 1.5 percent during the first half of 2004. Apple continues to dominate the PC-based digital music download market with around 70% market share. This is expected to go even higher if the company tracked Macintosh users.

Apple however still trails some of the bigger stores like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Amazon.com, FYE, and Circuit City. However, it won’t take long before they manage to catch-up with these retailers.