Apple takes the #1 music retailer spot from Wal-Mart, or does it?

by Brad Linder Apr 3rd 2008

There's a rumor floating around this morning that Apple has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the top music retailer in the US. Ars Technica reports that Apple has sent a memo to employees showing the results of an NPD MusicWatch survey in January. There's just one problem. In February, Apple publicly stated that it was now the number two music seller in the US.

As Engadget points out, there may have been a spike in January because a whole bunch of people picked up new iPods and iPod gift cards for the holidays in Decemeber. Suffice it to say, if Apple was really the top music retailer in the country right now, they wouldn't be passing around an internal memo. They'd be sending out press releases with pictures of Steve Jobs stepping on a smiley face with blood poring out of its nose. Wait, smiley faces don't usually have noses, do they?

~~We're fairly certain that digital music will surpass physical media sales one day. That day just doesn't happen to be today.~~

Update: Nope, apparently that day is today. Apple has issued a press release stating that NPD's numbers show the company was the top music retailer in January and March.

Tags: digital-media, digital-music, itunes, mp3, music

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JayMonster said 9:51AM on 4-03-2008

Looks to me based on that picture, that somebody is playing a bit of a game.

Top section shows Physical Media to be 70% of sales.

Bottom showing Apple on top of "equivalized sales" is probably their part of "digital sales" only. (Which comes as a suprise to nobody)

skim said 12:19PM on 4-03-2008

The "#2" announcement in February was based on sales for the year ending December 2007. January 2008 comes AFTER December 2007. I know it can be confusing.

Joe said 12:22PM on 4-03-2008

Apple's statement in February was based on NPD's data for DECEMBER, meaning that it predates the data from Ars Technica. You might want to fix that.

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