14 DAY TRIAL // Apple's iTunes is a leader of the DRM digital download services all over the world, but this doesn't mean things look great. Being the first one in a market that seems to go faster and faster down the slope is not the best place to be, and - according to Forrester Research - iTunes is located somewhere between the hammer and the anvil these days. Its enemies? The good old audio CD - which has seen a sales drop by 20% in the last five years, while iTunes' sales fell by 65% since January - and the pirated music, which is an evil that we all should be aware of and try to eradicate, instead of looking aside and pushing the "Download" button and thinking "I am just downloading it for a quick preview, I'll buy the CD later".
Obviously, Apple didn't make public the revenues from iTunes, but according to Forrester's analysis of credit card transactions over the last 27 months, this year's numbers don't look good at all. No, there's nothing wrong with Apple's store, since Nielsen Soundscan indicated three consecutive quarters of flat or declining revenues for the sector as a whole. Despite the fact that Apple introduced videos and movies to the iTunes inventory, the growth in sales is still expected, and nobody can tell when and if it's going to come.
The average purchases were under 10$ per year for an entire household using iTunes, while individuals bought around 7CDs per year; if we think that most households hold at least two individuals that can purchase CDs online... you get the idea: the iPod is going up, but the iTunes store is down. If you have some iPods on the shopping lists this Christmas and you also like iTunes, try to buy more songs for your gadget too and remember that piracy is theft, after all!