Billboard magazine reports that weekly digital track sales have set a new record, with 47.7 million sold in the US between December 22-28, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Christmas week sales were 126 percent higher than the previous week - suggesting Christmas gifts of Apple iPods and download gift cards.
Total US digital track sales in 2008 were over a billion - up 27 percent year on year.
Apple's iTunes Music Store is still the number-one digital download service, but Amazon MP3, which was initially launched in the US last year, has recently opened in the UK - offering over 3 million Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free songs which are encoded at 256kbps (double the 128Kbps rate of the Apple iTunes Store's copy-protected restricted tunes) and can be played back on any device that supports MP3, transferred to digital libraries such as Apple iTunes and even burnt to CD.
Comments
James said: I believe that people are starting to look at other sorces of stores that sell DRM-less music I believe the reason why Apple is still popular is because they are so used to the one store they always shop forMaybe 2009 would be the year when Apple finally sells DRM free music
Alan Haze said: Thanks Chris Story now corrected 2008 seems so long ago
CHRIS MILLAR said: Total US digital track sales in 2009 were over a billion - up 27 percent year on year2009 I knew those sale figures were dodgy lol