Apple Announces Top iTunes Downloads, 2008

• Author: admin
• Filed under: Tech News
• Date: Dec 3,2008

It’s that time of the year when everyone announces their “Top” list. Top this, top that. Feeling left out, Apple has launched a special section of iTunes that lists the top iTunes downloads of 2008. This includes not only movies, TV shows and music, but also App Store purchases for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Note that Apple does not release individual sales figures for each item, so we have no idea how many of each were sold from iTunes, though some artists or their reps will of course provide digital download figures.

In terms of albums, Coldplay was the #1 iTunes album download this year with its Viva la Vida. Jack Johnson (yes, the No. 1 male artist of all time on iTunes, as announced by Steve Jobs at the “Let’s Rock” iPod event) was No. 2 with Sleep Through the Static.

Singles, No. 1 was Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love, with Coldplay’s Viva la Vida at No. 2.

For movies, the top one hasn’t even been released yet: The Dark Knight, which releases Dec. 9th, and then WALL-E at No. 2 with Kung-Fu Panda and Iron Man trailing at Nos. 3 and 4.

TV Shows? Gossip Girl, Season 2 and Family Guy, Season 6.

For me, far more interesting was the list of App Store downloads. Apple split them into two major categories (paid and free, natch), and then into subcategories. You can see a table with the top downloads below:

It’s quite a large list, given all the categories. Now here’s where it would be great if we could see download figures. It would be great to know just how well Koi Pond did vs. Pandora Radio, or just how well a paid game did against a free game.

I would also expect the top apps / music / whatever on Apple’s list to see a spike after this listing. Check out the list. See if there’s something you missed, app or otherwise.