Music downloads in Japan on rise

Music downloads in Japan on rise

Apple recently launched their online music store iTunes in Japan, which is the home country of their biggest rivals Sony. The launch has been so successful that it has helped the Macintosh maker garner a major lead in the sales of digital music players and online music purchases. In fact, the latest news in claims that the efforts from Apple has helped more than double the number of songs purchased online during the third quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter.

The figures were released by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) on Thursday. The association revealed that there were 2.3 million downloads from Internet-based music stores during the July to September quarter. In comparison, the first and second quarters of this year saw downloads of around 1.1 million and 1.0 million songs respectively.

They have released these details based on the facts provided by major portal operators including Apple, Label Gate Co. Ltd. and Yahoo Japan Corp. The data however counts downloads and not tracks, so a single track or several purchased together as an album are each counted as one download. RIAJ however did not reveal the figures of individual operators in the market.