Last year a big deal was made when eMusic shifted to focus on the major labels by making concessions in pricing and moving from credits to dollar amounts for purchase, and more importantly changing how royalties and other details were handled in a way that resulted in many major indie labels pulling out of the service. Until then, eMusic was looked upon as the greatest place for indie music.
Turns out the best place is actually iTunes.
According to a report at Digital Music News:
Last week, global independent trade group AIM stumbled upon a stunningly lopsided stat. Namely, that iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify collectively accounted for 94.4 percent of indie digital revenues, worldwide. The rest – specifically, 51 stores – were simply squeezed into the periphery.
But it gets even crazier. Because after digging a bit deeper, it turns out that iTunes is easily the biggest of those three. Perhaps that was totally obvious, though Apple makes up nearly 85 percent of digital indie revenue, worldwide, and that includes aggregated downloads, subscription, and streaming sources. And, it also leaves both Amazon and Spotify with paltry shares of roughly 5-6 percent each.
The following is a breakdown of the top 14 digital providers, as counted by AIM and submitted to the British government as part of the Hargreaves Review. The providers themselves aren’t labeled, though we confirmed that iTunes is the biggest chunk – and it makes sense.
Looking at the graph and assuming Spotify is green like its logo, it looks more like a 6%/4% Amazon/Spotify split. But Apple at 85% continues to be an amazing figure. They are almost always priced higher than Amazon, the music player is much more bulky than Spotify’s svelte player, and Ping is a fairly mediocre social music discovery tool.
Yet it remains the world’s music store. While not surprising for pop, for more obscure genres and artists you might think the ‘we hate big draconian Apple’ attitude would have an impact. It doesn’t.
Source: Digital Music News
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