Although it's getting healthy competition from music-industry approved apps like Rdio, Spotify and Pandora, iTunes still controls a huge portion of digital music download revenues. CultofMac reports today that the iTunes Store accounted for approximately 60% of digital music downloads in 2012, and nearly 20% of overall global music revenues.
The music industry saw an increase of record sales and a decrease in piracy, and total revenues for 2012 hit $16.5 billion worldwide . The world of digital downloads saw a decent share of that revenue, bringing in $5.6 billion across all online sources. Of that total revenue, CultofMac notes that Apple paid $3.4 billion to the record labels for the year's iTunes sales — quick math shows that the payment puts the company at the top of the heap for overall digital downloads.
This is a promising trend for the music industry, which finally saw the first increase in year-over-year revenue for the first time since 1999 — the year that revenues began a serious freefall from a peak of $28.6 billion. iTunes is still king, but subscription services also represented well this year, making up around 10% of overall revenues.
What do you think of iTunes dominance in the digital music scene? Can anyone else compete? Let us know in the comments.
Lauren Hockenson is a tech reporter and 8-bit enthusiast who dreams of being a wizard. She can be found on MyIGN at lhockenson or on Twitter at @lhockenson.
Source : ign[dot]com
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