Methodology: I started logging TCP/IP addresses with each purchase in September, so unfortunately, I only have 4 month's worth of data, but that's still enough to be interesting. I purchased a "TCP/IP to country" database from IP2Location and wrote a script to determine which country purchasers come from. I was fairly impressed with IP2Location's database, as Usenet is abuzz with the complexities of converting TCP/IP addresses to countries. For example, you can check the .country on the reverse dns name, grep whois entry of the domain that owns it, or grep the whois of the ISP controlling the TCP/IP address. When I hand checked a few, the database was correct (based on the techniques Usenet said to try). Perhaps more importantly, I found few mistakes when comparing (customer entered) CD shipping addresses with the country derived from their TCP/IP address.
Notes on this chart:
* 63% of our sales are to the USA, 37% outside the USA
* The Christmas season has seen an increase in the gap, likely fueled by Christmas gift purchasing. Otherwise, the 63%/37% split is fairly stable.
Notes on this chart:
* This chart shows how the top 4 countries in our non-USA sales are doing.
* The percentages in the chart are the percentage of non-USA sales that each country is responsible for (i.e.: the UK being responsible for 17% of non-USA sales).
* We've seen a big rise in the past 4 months in Canadian sales, from 10% to 18% of the non-USA total.
* France has seen a modest increase (4% to 7%) while Germany has had a modest decrease (10% to 6%). We think this is due to more press interest in France, and less press in Germany.
Notes on this chart:
* this chart shows how much, on average, each country volunteers to pay for an album of music on Magnatune.
* Italy ($9.12), Austria ($9.05), UK ($8.78), Switzerland ($8.64), France ($8.62), Germany ($8.49) pay the most.
* Mexico ($5.60), Israel ($6.57), Singapore ($7.30) and Spain ($7.34) pay the least.
* Only the top 25 countries were considered for this chart, as the countries which purchase very little on Magnatune have not enough purchases to be statistically significant.
Notes on this chart:
* the USA is responsible for 64% of our sales (CDs and downloads combined).
* the UK, Canada, Germany and France are the most significant non-USA countries.
* The other countries account for 17% of our sales.
* this chart is all our music sales, and includes both downloads and CDs.
Notes on this chart:
* downloads are slightly more country-diverse, with the USA being responsible for 61% of Magnatune's sales.
* More non-USA countries are significant (39%) in our download market.
Notes on this chart:
* 85% of CD Sales go the USA
* Very few countries are significant sources of CD sales.
* Perhaps CD sales are lower to Europe (and Canada) because of higher price on Magnatune ($4 more) to ship CDs there. This would imply that we could double non-USA CDs sales (to download-like levels) if we could ship them at USA postal rates (perhaps by manufacturing them in Europe).
"Perhaps CD sales are lower to Europe (and Canada) because of higher price on Magnatune ($4 more) to ship CDs there. This would imply that we could double non-USA CDs sales (to download-like levels) if we could ship them at USA postal rates (perhaps by manufacturing them in Europe)."
I am a french buyer and I agree with this, with lower postal rates I would have buy some CDs for christmas.
Posted by: Benoit | January 24, 2005 at 05:30 AM