Apple sells 600M songs, claims 80 percent marketshare

During the launch of Australian version of the iTunes Music Store, Apple said it had sold 600 million songs worldwide and claimed more than 80 percent marketshare in most of the 20 countries it serves; however it said that the company's biggest competitors in the online music industry remained the illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services, rather than other legal music services from MSN, Yahoo, and RealNetworks. Apple earlier today launched iTunes for Australia during its "biggest ever" iTunes launch ever--complete with over one million songs and a large catalog of independent music; however, conspiciously absent were songs from major record label Sony BMG. iTunes vice-president Eddy Cue, who spoke at the launch, said that people now have an alternative to illegally downloading music and he believes they are willing to pay a "fair price," according to ZDNet Australia.

"Our view is that our biggest competitor is illegal music and P2P services. We always thought that if we offered a better alternative then those customers would be happy to pay. Obviously … we will never be better than free … but we think AU$1.69 is a very competitive and fair price to pay."

Cue, however, refused to comment on the absence of songs from Sony BMG artists, only saying that the company has worked hard to expand iTunes and that it is still trying bring music from Sony artists to iTunes. "We are working with Sony and we know their artists would like to be a part of the launch and we hope they will join us".

Apple will sell singles at AU$1.69 per track and albums will cost around AU$16.99. Music videos are also available for download at AU$3.39 each.

Filed under: industry
Other story tags: digital music/video