Music - Retail

A large portion of my job focuses around "media effectiveness." In other words - what ads make people buy stuff.... So, I spend a lot of my weekdays talking about the need to extend the conversation of internet advertising effectiveness outside of mere e-commerce activity. While we know at least 60% of in-store shoppers use the internet to help form their buying decisions.... only ~7% of total sales come directly from e-commerce. Which brings me to the news story below...

Apple Inc's iTunes digital media store edged out Best Buy Co and Target Corp to become the second-largest U.S. music retailer, behind Wal-Mart Stores, according to data released on Tuesday from tracking firm NPD Group.

Based on 2007 sales, legal music downloads now account for 10 percent of music acquired in the United States, but the increase failed to offset a decline in physical CD sales, NPD said.

About one million consumers stopped buying CDs in 2007, according to NPD.

The iTunes store now has more than 50 million customers and has sold more than 4 billion songs.

So - to re-iterate ... Apple sells more music than Best Buy or Target... They solely distribute music online ... Does anyone think that the internet was the only way Apple's 50 million music customers learned about the music they wanted to buy? OF COURSE NOT! So - why is the assumption that all of Wal-marts music purchasers learned about music through newspaper circulars???