Apple passes Wal-Mart and I don't care

All right that's probably too bold a statement to make. Ars Technica among many other sources reports that Apple has passed Wal-Mart as the top US music retailer. This is definitely an indication of how much music retailing has changed in the five years since Apple launched online music sales. Apple passing Wal-Mart, which for Americans in smaller towns is often their only music retail source, demonstrates not only the shift of music retailing from a physical purchase to a digital download, but also demonstrates that online retailing has finally "arrived" in the way it was predicted during the first dot-com boom. (If you don't think we're in the midst of the second one, you haven't been paying attention, but that's another post.)

I however have recently discovered the joy of the Amazon music store, and I am loving it for four reasons:

• better catalog of the "obscure"
• higher quality of files (based on bitrate)
• lower prices
• DRM free

Amazon has even crafted up a little application that will automatically import your downloaded music into iTunes, so even though I would be willing to take the extra effort I don't need to worry. Amazon is now my first stop when buying music.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html