Immediately after USA Today published a report declaring that Amazon’s music store is now the number 2 online seller of digital music, eMusic CEO, David Pakman disputed the report and said that eMusic is the number 2 online music seller and not Amazon.
“This morning I read with some surprise in USA Today that Amazon is “No. 2 in digital [music] sales since opening nearly six months ago.” Amazon’s entry into this market last year was an important milestone in the continuing irrelevance of DRM and the overly restrictive and anti-consumer policies that the music industry has foolishly wielded in this new, digital age. But let’s get one thing straight: outside of iTunes, no one sells more music digitally than eMusic, and we don’t plan on giving up that title anytime soon.”
After reading the report, Mr. Pakman talked to USA Today and found out that the online newspaper based the outcome of the report from the declaration of representatives from the four major four labels naming Amazon as second to iTunes in online music sales. Likewise, USA Today told Pakman the newspaper did not mention eMusic since its subscription model was not relevant to the story that USA Today wanted to publish.
eMusic unlike Amazon or iTunes offers their customers an option to download music on a regular subscription basis, starting with $9.99 a month for 30 tracks. Mr. Pakman said that these MP3 which were obtained by users from their site were actual purchases and were even included in 239 million digital tracks sold this year as reported by Nielsen Soundscan.
And speaking about sales figures, Mr. Pakman also wondered how could the USA Today arrived at an announcement about Amazon reaching the number 2 spot in digital music sales when it did not even disclose its sales figures since it was launched six months ago. The eMusic chief even cited the company’s own digital music sales figures - 7,000,000 songs average monthly sales, 40,000 tracks since Amazon’s music store was launched, 200,000,000 songs sold since eMusic was launched - all huge numbers proving that in terms of sales eMusic is doing pretty good and which should earn the company the number 2 spot next to the iTunes.
Mr. Pakman then concluded his letter by saying the eMusic is the number 2 online music store and it has no intention of giving that spot to Amazon.
But unfortunately, the USA Today report has already been published and has been read by so many. It would have been better if an established research firm would delve into this and come up with its own report citing different sales figures from all the online music stores. Only then would the stigma of the USA Today report could be erased and the number 2 title be given to whoever really deserves that accolade.
Via [MacDaily News]
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