It seems the Forrester report on itunes sales is everywhere at the moment.

It's almost like the online bashing that followed the Sandi Thom hype controversy from a while back..webcams in piss-stained apartments...etc.

Leaving aside the Sandi Thom-esque hype from Apple over how well the ITMS was supposedly doing, I think many are missing the geek factor in apple's approach and their '1 price for all' mantra simply doesn't fit with how people buy music.

For years it was normal for a punter to buy 2 full price albums, along with a few low price or bargain bucket items when buying music.

What's very clear from the Forrester report is that many use the itunes software to organise their music, but, the majority only pop into ITMS to buy a song they can't get anywhere else.

In other words, what Apple have essentially done is built the most famous, cheap music library on the planet. not a music shop.

While I think the download sales market is rising, I see online shops like the new ministry of sound one - that offers variable pricing with different formats - being a lot more succesfull than the ITMS.

people will buy full price, full quality downloads of the albums they really want...and also buy a few low cost, low (but reasonable) quality MP3 files of bands they want to check out.