iTunes Still On Top After 10 Years

As anyone who spends a lot of time online knows, the shelf life of web service providers is fairly short. For instance, in 2005 MySpace was the largest service on the Web with about 100 million users. Today it's half that, but far outdistanced by Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and about 100 others. Media darlings Friendster, Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces prospered for a bit, but are now but entries in Wikipedia. It doesn't take long to be replaced if something better comes along.

That's what makes iTunes so amazing. After 10 years, it's still going strong with 63% of the music distribution market in 2012, according to research company NPD Group. Not only that, there's no competitor for the crown on the horizon, although Amazon has increased its marketshare to 22%. What's more, 8 in 10 people still downloaded their tracks from iTunes, making it still the juggernaut of the music distribution world.

Indeed, 44 million Americans purchased at least one song from iTunes last year, a figure that's remained about the same for the last 3 years. And all this with the ever increasing popularity of streaming services.

What may be the most interesting aspect of the study though, called "Anual Music Study 2012," is that 38% of the population still feels that it's important to own music, and 30% still listens to albums.

There's no doubt that these figures are going to drop eventually, especially if Apple's new iRadio streaming service comes online soon, but for now, there's still some business left in the download.

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