Some good info from Fortune (and NPD):
The NPD Group on Tuesday issued what at first appears to be a pair of contradictory facts:
- Apple now controls the largest share of the music business, its iTunes Store accounting for 25% of unit sales in the first half of 2009, up from 14% in 2007.
- Compact discs are still the most popular format for paid music, accounting for 65% of unit sales.
How can this be? The trick is that Apple controls the lion's share — 69% — of paid downloads, whereas CD sales are spread out among many players, chief among them Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Amazon and Target.
To see better how this works, let's put the data into pie charts...
Check out the original post for the charts, which do indeed help clarify things.