Apple has continued to gain market share among music distributors in the US, according to a Billboard report. Apple's market share grew to 26.7 percent in 2009, up from 21.4 percent in the previous year.
Verizon on Thursday announced it will begin offering slotRadio+ microSD memory cards preloaded with music and compatible with the majority of the BlackBerry smartphones it carries. SanDisk introduced the cards at last year's CES, and they hold 1,000 songs from artists topping the Billboard charts in various genres. In addition to the music, users will also get 4GB of free storage space on each card.
The institution of variable song prices on iTunes has directly translated to a decrease in the popularity of the more expensive songs, Billboard finds in a short-term study of the immediate wake of the change. Those songs that were boosted to a $1.29 price typically fell 5.3 places on iTunes' Top 100 charts on Wednesday and another 2 places on Thursday. In exchange, those songs that kept their 99-cent pricing rose an average of 2.5 spots on Wednesday and 1.7 on Thursday.
