News

iTunes Ranks as #2 Online Music Retailer in Dec.

Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 4:20 PM - by Staff

comScore Media Metrix on Tuesday released its analysis of the top online properties during the month of December, when, as expected, many Web sites saw increased traffic, especially jewelry/luxury goods and music sites. In the latter category, iTunes ranked second with a 33% gain from November to 9.3 million unique visitors for the month.

Apple came in at number 17 on the list of top 50 Web sites for December, with 27.9 million unique visitors. Yahoo! led the list with 127 million unique visitors, far outpacing MSN/Microsoft and Time-Warner's 116 million each and Google's 93 million. The only other computer company on the list was Dell, which was number 41 with 16 million visitors.

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Billy K said:

member since 06 May 2004 with 297 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:08 pm

So...who was number one? Seems like something you might want to mention in this, ahem...story.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:15 pm

Billy K wrote:
So...who was number one? Seems like something you might want to mention in this, ahem...story.

Barnes and Noble.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:26 pm

Amazon?

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:46 pm

How do they parse out whether someone was looking for a book versus a CD, a B&N?

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:03 pm

poorly written. was apple number 2 retailer or music retailer, and if number 2, who was selling more music, and was it music on CD ora download. Next to useless story.

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mahuti said:

member since 09 Jan 2003 with 377 posts, TMO Staff, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:08 pm

written; Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 4:20 PM - by Staff......

That Staff character needs some journalism lessons.

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macslut said:

member since 03 Sep 2004 with 61 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:13 pm

I think they're calling Yahoo #1. I'm not sure, but I think Yahoo may have sold a music subscription to somebody during the month of December, so I guess technically they qualify.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:26 pm

You guys forgot that MSN/Microsoft also has a music service, so it can't be as simple as Yahoo. Because that would make Apple #3.

Agree this story needs to be better written.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:30 pm

As an earlier guest wrote, the answer is Barnes and Noble with 9.5m unique visitors. But that doesn't make much sense.

And as an earlier guest wrote, how do they know if it was a book visit vs a music visit?

In any case, if it was a B&N music visit, then it has to be CDs.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:38 pm

Guest wrote:
You guys forgot that MSN/Microsoft also has a music service, so it can't be as simple as Yahoo. Because that would make Apple #3.

That's a bad assumption, as I'm pretty sure that iTunes far outsells the MSN/Microsoft music service. For direct music file downloads, iTunes is #1, by a large margin. They've got something like 70% of the market.

No, if iTunes got outsold, it was by an online CD retailer, not a music track download service. Which would mean either Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:50 pm

If you click through to the story, Barnes & Noble (which doesn't sell downloads) is #1 with 9.5 million visitors, iTunes (which doesn't sell CDs) #2 with 9.3 million visitors. Even without asking whether they differentiate between book and CD customer at Barnes & Noble, it and iTunes are not really in the same category. It's clear that iTunes was far and away the biggest download retailer in December--none of the others even merit a mention, except soundsgood.com, an audiobook retailer that drew 1 million visitors. Soundsgood.com also sells CDs and cassettes, BTW.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:10 pm

As far as I know, B&N can determine if a sale was a CD or book (or another type of item since them sell more than books and music). So 9.5m CDs is a huge number, no matter how you look at it. In fact, it's more impressive to me because it means people are willing to spend more time buying a physical CD as opposed to instant gratification with a music download. Overall, the iTMS is small compared to physical CD sales.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:33 pm

The earlier comment about Microsoft was in response to macslut saying that Yahoo was #1. It was pointing out that that guess couldn't be right because the poorly written article did tell us that MSN/Microsoft had more visitors than iTunes. So iTunes would have to be #3, but iTunes was #2.

To the last guest poster: But the rank is not based on sales. It's based on unique visitors. So they would be measuring the number of unique visitors to any of the "music" pages on that website.

Question: Are the iTunes (9.3m) visitors included in the Apple (27.9m) visitors?

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Bosco said:

member since 03 Jun 2002 with 1002 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:42 pm

Being #2 is actually better for Apple than being #1. As close as they are, Apple is clearly on track to overtake B&N for #1 this month or next. And that will be huge news when it happens. As such, I am setting my price target for AAPL to 65535. I wanted to go to 70206, but the idiot who wrote my price targeting software assumed that all prices could fit in unsigned short integers. When the developer ports to Universal Binary, I'll request that this gets fixed.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:16 am

Guest wrote:
The earlier comment about Microsoft was in response to macslut saying that Yahoo was #1. It was pointing out that that guess couldn't be right because the poorly written article did tell us that MSN/Microsoft had more visitors than iTunes. So iTunes would have to be #3, but iTunes was #2.

To the last guest poster: But the rank is not based on sales. It's based on unique visitors. So they would be measuring the number of unique visitors to any of the "music" pages on that website.

Question: Are the iTunes (9.3m) visitors included in the Apple (27.9m) visitors?

Obiviously two different things are being measured... music sold, and unique visitors.

By one measure, iTunes is #2, and MSN/Microsoft is below that somewhere. By the other, MSN/Microsoft is tied for #2 with Time-Warner, and well behind Yahoo.

I agree, its a poorly written article.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:25 am

First of all, there's no way in the world that the iTunes Music Store had only 9.3 million visitors. They sold 14 million iPods in the quarter! A huge percentage of those people end up at the store, along with some of the other 30 million or so who already have iPods. And that's only UNIQUE visitors, not repeat visitors, which is almost certainly what's being measured here.

Second of all, like everybody else said, this article is terrible.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Jan 18, 2006 1:29 am

A VISITOR is not a SALE. MSN & MS is not legitimate since WIN machines are loaded with MSN as a start page. I know soemone with a MAc and an EXCITE start page that has never been changed ... Yahoo wins because look at their partners and subsidiaries - SBC (everytime you go to wonder why your phone bill is $400 - that's a visit!), Flickr, GeoCities, etc , etc ...

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