ITunes 10 Year Anniversary: Impact on Music Sales

[jtbell]

See the effect it's had on music sales here:

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/technology/itunes-music-decline/

Click the buttons to compare number of units and "sales" (number of dollars) versus time for various music formats.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I think it's absolutely astounding! I haven't thought about buying music in a physical store or even buying a cd in longer than 10 years. It's sad that my music is locked up in itunes though.

The single download phenomenon is also interesting. Many new pop artists aren't even releasing full albums anymore. They just release a new single every couple of months.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I can't run iTunes and it really ticks off my nephew who is producing his own music now. I can't download his songs. iTunes seems to have conflicts with some of the third party software that I use for work. When I uninstalled iTunes on my last computer it started running about twice as fast as it was before uninstalling the software.

 

[jtbell]

I use iTunes for most of my music-listening at home, streaming to my stereo via an Apple TV box. However, I've never bought music from the iTunes Store. Searching for classical music there is awkward, the tagging is inconsistent and clunky, and I prefer CD-quality lossless format to compressed formats.

I buy more than half of my new recordings as downloads from specialist classical-music dealers, or directly from the labels, and convert them to Apple Lossless format for importing into iTunes on my Mac. The rest (for which I can't find lossless downloads) I buy as CDs and rip into iTunes.

There's been a trend towards re-issuing classic older recordings in huge box sets like this one:

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Mercury%2BLiving%2BPresence/4785092

The per-disc price would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.

 

[Turion]

iTunes is one disaster of an application software-wise.

I can already feel the mind-aches I would get from reading the spaghetti source code due to incompetent developers.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Rather than iTunes, I just use internet radio now. Live 365 is pretty good.
http://www.live365.com/

 

[Adyssa]

I still buy most of my music on vinyl, and long may it live! <3

I really dislike iTunes. I do buy some digital music, but I buy either direct from the artist / label, or from the kind of store that has good selectors and don't just stock what the big pop labels pump out.

It troubles me that we are heading towards a closed internet, where people only access content through a few corporate portals. As if they knew what was best.

 

[inotyce]

...
It troubles me that we are heading towards a closed internet, where people only access content through a few corporate portals. As if they knew what was best.

Excellent!