S teve Jobs gave an interview to USA Today concerning Appleis music strategy. According to the story resulting from that interview, Mr. Jobs dismissed Wal-Mart as a competitive threat, said that Apple had trounced Dell in digital music players, and perhaps most importantly, said that half of the downloads from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) continue to be full albums. From the story:
"With over 25 million songs purchased and downloaded to date, the iTunes Music Store is hands-down the most successful online music store," said Steve Jobs, Appleis CEO. "Music fans are buying and downloading almost 1.5 million songs per week from the iTunes Music Store, which is a rate of 75 million songs per year."
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Rivals such as Dell have introduced more flexible portable players for other services. Jobs says Apple "trounced Dell this quarter" in music player sales. Researcher Jupiter predicts the $80 million digital music market will hit $1.6 billion in 2008. The field is quickly getting more crowded.
Jobs also said that half of iTunes sales are entire albums, not individual songs. Some music critics and artists feared that selling songs individually would destroy the album format.
You can find the full story at USA Today.