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An NPD Group report on music purchases in the US was released this week with some staggering numbers. While CDs are still the most common way to purchase music, 35 percent of all music purchased in the US was acquired via digital download, and that only counts the legal downloads. If you include illegal downloading and file sharing, it is clear that digital will completely overshadow CDs in a few years.  Even more amazing was that of these digital downloads, a whopping 69 percent of them were bought via Apple’s iTunes store. The closest competition was Amazon with a measly 9 percent.

As many different blogs have been pointing out, that means that one song in every four bought in the US this year passed through the benevolent hands of Steve Jobs and Apple, a higher percentage then any other single retailer, including Walmart. People have been talking for a couple years now about the massive clout in the music industry iTunes gives Apple, but numbers like that make it all the more apparent. How can that clout be used? Well, consider the fact that the Number 2 vendor, Walmart, has been known to force record companies to change CD art on new releases by refusing to display obscene or controversial covers. How much more control could Apple at Number 1 exert over the music industry if they wanted to? Actually, how do we know they aren’t already doing so?

It also may help explain why so many major artists take great pains to be seen using iPods. Perhaps it works like the old rule that one of the best ways to get your song on MTV was to mention MTV in the lyrics.

But then, does anything REALLY explain John Mayer?

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Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).