James Delahunty
23 Jan 2006 6:45
According to research by Nielsen NetRatings, the popularity of the iPod is helping to drive much more traffic to Apple's iTunes site. The firm found that traffic to the iTunes site had grown by a massive 241% in 2005. Between December 2004 and 2005 the numbers of people going to the site regularly grew from 6.1 million to 20.7 million. The firm said the figures show that more than 14% of the net's population is using the iTunes service.
"Consumers have clearly indicated that they are eager to control their own music libraries, one song at a time," said Jon Gibs, director of media analytics at Nielsen NetRatings. The iPod music player has been the most successful MP3 player to date with over 14 million iPods sold over the holiday quarter. Taking that number and the fact that you can only get legal songs for iPods from iTunes into account, the huge increase in traffic is not exactly surprising.
However, the research didn't just focus on things we already know. It found that 12 to 17 year olds made up a disproportionately large group of iTunes users. They were more than twice as likely to visit the music store than any other population group. It also found that iTunes users were 2.2 times more likely to own a Volkswagen than other Internet users, and that Audi and Subaru cars were popular amongst the users as well.
The research even went on to show that the most popular alcoholic drink amongst iTunes users was cider, and the most favorite magazine was Wired. I don't know why these details were needed... but they might interest some users anyway.
Source:
BBC News