August 20, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
CD sales have declined in recent years due to the popularity of MP3 players like the iPod and Zune. On top of that most smart phones like the iPhone and BlackBerry allow you to store and listen to your digital music. Despite all of the new technology in our lives, CD’s still represented the largest chunk of music sales in the first half of 2009 at 65%. Digital music accounted for the remaining 35% music sales of which iTunes has 25% of the market. Outside of iTunes , Amazon is the only other company to make a dent in the digital music marketplace. No competitors seem to be a serious threat to Apple at this time, but many companies are doing all they can to gain their piece of the market. “The growth of legal digital music downloads, and Apple’s success in holding that market, has increased iTunes’s overall strength in the retail music category,” said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD Group.
As technology continues to advance and make MP3 and other devices more affordable to the masses, the digital music scene will increase, but CD sales should continue to be popular for at least the next few years. Ecommerce, however, still plays a part in the sales of CDs as many purchases are performed online. The leaders in the physical music market are Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and Amazon. CDs are over 25 years old and it makes sense that ecommerce will lead the way for music sales in the foreseeable future.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
