Posted on 12/13/2010 11:00:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
NEW YORK (Billboard) – As music retailers suffer ever shrinking sales, some of the most aggressive moves to boost business are being made by the perpetual runners-up in their respective sectors.
The past year has seen heightened competitive positioning between Apple's iTunes store and Amazon for digital sales and Walmart and Target for CD sales. In both instances the latter merchant is bringing the fight to their larger competitor. Amazon batters iTunes daily with pricing promotions like the Daily Deal, while Target recently used huge marketing spending to challenge Walmart's dominance in country music.
AMAZON VS. ITUNES
The Amazon MP3 store's roughly 1.3% share of the U.S. music account base in 2009 (part of Amazon's overall 7.1% share) was dwarfed by market leader iTunes, which held a commanding 26.7% of the market, according to Billboard estimates.
But that hasn't prevented Amazon from becoming a thorn in the side of its much larger rival. Amazon's Daily Deal, the most closely watched element on the retailer's "Special MP3 Deals" page, has proved to be a powerful generator of album sales, especially upon the release of a new title.
For instance, Amazon priced Arcade Fire's album "The Suburbs" at $3.99 during its debut week in August, helping drive first-week sales of 156,000 (of which 97,000 were digital, according to Nielsen SoundScan) and a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, Amazon priced Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" at $3.99 on its November 22 release date, pushing first-week sales of 59,000 at Amazon, compared with about 163,000 at iTunes, according to sources, an impressively narrow gap given iTunes' larger market share.
Amazon's loss-leader pricing has helped it grow market share and transform itself from a catalog retailer to a potent force for new releases.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
1. Amazon's cheap pricing is siphoning off full album sales for indie releases (specifically Arcade Fire's The Suburbs), but overall iTunes still thumps them. Mostly because of iPods, though, probably.
2. Target is gaining on Wal-Mart in music sales, mostly due to a willingness to dive headfirst into the country market, and by securing exclusive country releases (like a deluxe Taylor Swift album). Wal-Mart, meanwhile, is moving away from the exclusive approach, citing ending up with a bunch of AC/DC and Kiss albums it can't send back to a label for a refund. But overall, Wal-Mart is still winning.
I remember hearing about Walmart and the new AC/DC album. They ordered a huge batch of albums and they didn’t sell well. Meanwhile Iron Maiden used all retailers in America and they charted at Number 4 on the Billboard Top 100.
Seriously, if I want most of an album I generally buy the CD so I can get the full uncompressed data (1.411 Mbps) instead of 128 or 192 kbps. I've bought a couple of things on iTunes but most digital music I've bought has been on Amazon. I've bought quite a few of their "99 Most Essential _________" which range in price from $1.99 to $5.
iTunes sound quality is poor. The sampling rate is really low. Teh drooling idiots here who post Apple spam and pimping daily will disagree.
Do you know if there’s a way when ripping a CD to the hard drive, to get the full uncompressed music on it? The best I get from Windows Media Player is 192 kbps.
Where can you get decent quality that will run on an iPod or am I stock with crappy iTunes. Apple are scammers and the sound quality is comparable to a crystal radio for iTunes downloads.
Stupid question, but I’m clueless on this stuff:
My 12 y.o. is getting an MP3 player for Christmas from her grandparents. Where is the best source for music to download to the device?
JDownloader, and filestube.com for the music files.
I buy my music almost exclusively on Amazon.com these days; taking a quick look back at my recent purchases, it appears that all of the downloaded audio files are either 256 or 320 kbps... The cost savings (most CDs I buy are between $5-$9.99) and the immediate gratification factor (no waiting for CDs in the mail, no trips to a crowded store!) are well worth any minor (to my ear anyway) audio quality degradation. IMHO, anyway...
Maybe its just me.
bookmark
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