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iTunes Blows Up

December 29, 2006 in Music by Aaron | 2 comments

Having trouble redeeming your iTunes gift card in the last few days? Having trouble evening logging into the iTunes music store? Well you’re not the only one. According to an AP report on CNN.com the music site has had record numbers of shoppers since Christmas. The article also states that the iTunes music store has experienced four times the amount of traffic this Christmas Season as they did last year. Just proves the success of the iPod & iTunes and the increasing evidence that Microsoft’s Zune & Marketplace aren’t really competition.

iPod

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December 29, 2006 at 3:35 am

Steve Kaschimer

This doesn’t prove anything at all about Zune or Marketplace… After all, think about how long Apple has had a monopoly in the MP3 player arena (I heard one kid call it an iPod while he was looking at a Creative MP3 player…). You can’t seriously expect Microsoft to cut into the market share THAT quickly. I mean after all, look how difficult it has been for other browsers to compete with the dominance of IE on the web.

What this does prove, however, is that Apple seriously underestimated the popularity of iTunes this Christmas and did not take the appropriate actions to ensure that the service wouldn’t be negatively impacted by the additional traffic this year.

“A big seller this year has been the iTunes gift card, which is used to pay for music downloads. Young people who can’t get credit cards but download lots of music are both buyers and eager recipients of these cards, Michaels said.

“They just fly off the shelves,” he said.”
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=540059

December 29, 2006 at 5:38 am

Sean

Steve - I agree with you in principle that there hasn’t been enough time for the Zune to make a dent in the iPod juggernaut, but the reviews for it haven’t exactly been overwhelming (http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/zune-review/ for example). I’m not sure it’s the magic iPod killer that everyone is looking for.