Apple’s dominance of digital music market untouched by Pandora, Spotify

Despite the rise of new competitors, Apple’s dominance of the market for digital songs remains the same. AllThingsD points out that new research from Asymco shows that Apple’s iTunes generates around $6.9 billion in revenue from digital music each year, which is 75% of the $9.3 billion that consumers spend on digital music annually. This means that while music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify have shown rapid growth recently, they still can’t match the revenue generating powers of the iTunes store. iTunes’ popularity also shows us why Apple was able to successfully play hardball with music labels when negotiating a deal for iTunes Radio — its clout in the digital music realm means that record companies are willing to take less per-song revenue if it means they’ll be exposed to a much wider audience.