noWax

Some facts have come to light recently which highlight how much, or in fact how little, the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) has effected the market of digital music.

A study (released this week) carried out by Forrester Research found that just 3% of American households have made a purchase from the iTMS. Those buyers spent an average of $35 a year. Since the introduction of the iTMS, Apple has been selling just 20 iTunes tracks for each iPod sold! This is roughly 0.3% of the storage space taken up on an iPod. People aren’t sold on buying digital music then.

For Apple, the iTMS itself is mostly a sideshow supported by heavy-selling iPods which are the breadwinners. Most iPod buyers stuff their devices with tracks pulled from CDs or downloaded from P2P networks.

For record labels, that raises some serious issues about the long-term revenue potential of the paid download market especially as iPod sales continue to gain. Don’t sweat now boys. It’s early days. It’s only gonna get worse. Podcast useage will swell, music blogs are increasing at an alarming rate. No one can’t police this, you need a different standpoint. Glad it’s not my problem. Good luck.

And in other quite amusing news the iPod charger is outselling the Microsoft Zune on Amazon.com, ha ha.