Monopoly? What Monopoly?
It was recently reported that
Apple has announced that music sales from its iTunes Music Store now eclipse CD sales from Wal-Mart as the impact of the music download era hits home.
The latest data released by the NPD Group in February indicates that iTunes has over 50 million customers, cumulative recorded sales exceeding 4 billion, and a music library over the 6 million song mark.
Its almost like Wal-Mart does not have the coercive power to force people to buy their music from them. Odd.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Lol, you’re ‘companies don’t have monopolies’ argument isn’t really helped by bringing up iTunes…
April 8th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I disagree. Competition between Wal-Mart and iTunes shows perfect how neither of these large corporations have a monopoly on selling music.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I may be naive here, but was music sales ever considered to be a monopoly for one company? When I was young, there were many stores to buy CDs. Big stores and small stores. The small stores were mostly specialty needs - lots of cds that the big guys didn’t have. While the medium is different now, I never suspected a place like WalMart had a monopoly on the music that people buy.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Also, claiming there’s competition between places that sell CD’s and online music stores is kind of like claiming there’s competition between movie theatres and stores that sell DVDs. Considering that most people who use iTunes own mp3 players, and thus don’t have much use for cds, it’s unlikely that there’s much customer overlap.