CD Baby is an independent online record store that started its life selling the CDs of independent music artists, and is now also provides those same artists a portal onto iTunes and many other virtual download stores. They just announced how well different virtual stores were doing for their artists. (CD Baby has been the primary distributer for my Sensitive Chaos and TouchXtone CDs, hence has also gotten me onto iTunes and the like. My personal experience matches these figures.)
iTunes Easily Dominates CD Baby Digital Distribution
iTunes is easily the strongest outlet for digitally-distributed CD Baby artists, according to recent figures posted by the independent and unsigned retailer. CD Baby founder Derek Sivers routinely posts sales figures online, and most recently offered a percentage breakdown of sales from its digital vendors. The distribution list is rather exhaustive, yet iTunes Stores - in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere - account for nearly 83 percent of total sales.
Sivers characterized the results as “interesting, but not surprising,” though the disclosure reflects the dominance that iTunes carries both on popular and more obscure content. Interestingly, eMusic ranked a distant fifth in the ranking with a sales percentage of 2.3 percent.
In total, Sivers counted revenues of $21,236,344, a cumulative figure. In terms of other retailers, Rhapsody ranked second with 4.0 percent of the pie, while Napster ranked third with 3.4 percent. MusicNet rounded fourth with 2.3 percent.