The growth of Amazon MP3 since its birth last September has been phrased several ways. Substantial. Huge. Fast. Amazing.
Whether any of those terms are accurately placed, we’ve really no way of knowing. Despite a report delivered late last month by USA Today touting Amazon’s rise to the #2 spot in the digital music sales industry, behind iTunes and purportedly ahead of eMusic (whose CEO quickly disputed the claim), there’s reason to believe that the big picture is rather complex, and that one should proceed with caution when analyzing the numbers.
That being said, when a researcher comes out onto the public stage and talks calculations, we listen and attempt to decipher the data. As has been reported by Greg Sandoval on CNET’s News Blog, the latest comparison to be made about the market for digital downloads comes by way of NPD Group. The point NPD happens to raise now is, like most another other to come before, primarily about market share, and that regardless of whether Amazon MP3 really has grown to top-two or top-three prominence, there’s one thing Jeff Bezos still needs to consider: iTunes is still very much the king of the hill. Or jungle. Or whatever.
According to Russ Crupnick, an entertainment industry analysts for the group, Amazon’s February sales figures showed that a total of 10% of “previous Apple (iTunes) shoppers” had shopped at Amazon MP3. Yes, 10%. How can we construe this information? Well, we can take the line of “only 10%?” Or we can option Crupnick’s own suggestion, which is that this finding is a “healthy indication that the digital music customer pool can expand into new consumer groups who have not yet joined the iTunes community.”
NPD also suggests that sales data for Amazon MP3 is trumped by iTunes by more than 10 times. That’s 1000%, at least. I must say I have litter reservation to consider that figure suspiciously high, particularly as NPD goes on to claim that Amazon is indeed #2 to Apple’s #1 in the marketplace.