
With iTMS you buy the songs for 99 cents each or $9.95 for most albums. While iTunes works with both Windows and Macintosh computers, competitors are Windows-only. The second distinction deals with the computer platform. The only music player that songs downloaded from iTunes will work with is the iPod - and Apple boss Steve Jobs has said that will never change. The first is the iPod, Apple's popular personal music player. There are three major differences between Apple's iTunes Music Store and the competition. That suggests digital music has a long way to go.īut Crupnick says the number of households using digital music downloads has doubled and doubled again in the last few months.
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use an online music download service in any given month, said Crupnick. Right now, about 1 percent of the Internet homes in the U.S. "But we're talking about an industry in its very infancy that is growing wildly and has lots of room for competition."

"Apple clearly has the lead here," says Russ Crupnick, president of NPD Music, a division of the NPD Group marketing and information company.

They're offering different prices and features. Rivals have been slowly trickling into the marketplace since last summer. Apple, which unveiled its revolutionary service offering legal downloads of digital music for 99 cents per song a year ago last week, currently has about 70 percent of the market, with 4.9 million customers through March. Nothing proves success more than imitation.Īnd in the world of personal technology, the current illustration of that is the crop of competitors that has risen up to try and challenge the dominance of Apple's iTunes Music Store. MIKE WENDLAND: More companies offering legal music downloading

A nice little article about iTunes, and others.
