Apple's iTunes store may have just racked up its 10 billionth music download, but there are signs that the music download market is shrinking.
According to the NPD Group, 34.6 million US consumers downloaded music in 2009, a drop from the previous year's 35.2 million. Combined with the continued softening of physical CD sales, a total of 24 million fewer people spent money on new music in 2009 than in 2007.
The vast majority of those near-35 million music downloaders in the US will no doubt have used iTunes to download their music, and between them they have managed to drive the store past the 10 billion downloads mark.
It has taken seven years to happen, with the first billion downloads coming after three years and the five billion mark having been reached only 18 months ago.
If the latest NPD figures are to be believed, however, that exponential rise may have now passed its zenith. The NPD Group's Russ Crupnick revealed the latest figures at the Digital Music Forum in New York yesterday, and according to CNET suggested the drop in digital downloaders could be a result of people trying out the format and then losing interest.
There has also been a drop in people using peer-to-peer network to share music illegally, with Crupnick citing inferior quality, the threat of malware and the improvement in quality of legal services including music-streaming sites as potential reasons.
Interestingly, Crupnick reported that free online radio and free on-demand music services affected paid music downloads in very different ways, with the former leading to a 41 per cent increase in downloads and the latter a 13 per cent decrease.
Apple's online store was first launched in 2003, when it served only music tracks, but its popularity has grown since then and it now sells a wide variety of multimedia content including TV shows and podcasts.
The lucky downloader who racked up the 10 billionth downloaded track the Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feeling was rewarded with a $10,000 iTunes gift card for their trouble.
