Phone Music Downloads Dominate In Japan

Japanese consumers' music download platform of choice is the mobile phone by an overwhelming margin. According to figures from the Japanese recording industry's trade body, phone downloads accounted for 98 percent of all music downloads by unit and 96 percent by value in the first six months of the year. It's hard to know just how many of those phone downloads are full songs, though, as the figure includes ringtones -- something for which the Japanese have a huge appetite. The computer share should grow quickly, as Apple sold 1 million songs through the iTunes Music Store in the first four days after its launch earlier in the month, which is nearly half as many as the trade group says its rivals sold in the first half of the year.

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