WebProNews

Nearly 40 percent of the Japanese online population visited an entertainment music site in August, according to a new study from comScore.

The study found that Japan had the highest penetration of users of Apple iTunes during the month, when compared to users in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Japanese visitors to music sites spent an average of 16 minutes per visit and had nearly five visits per visitor during the month. Yahoo! Music was the most popular site with 7.3 million visitors, followed by Sony Connect with 2.9 million visitors and Sony BMG Music Entertainment trailed with 2.6 visitors.

"The Internet and other digital media have become key platforms for music consumption and clearly represent the future of the music industry," said Maru Sato, managing director of comScore Japan.

"With so much consumer music activity occurring in the digital space today, it is increasingly important to capture the available audience now and get them engaged with your service."

ComScore also analyzed a selected group of music download sites in Japan, tracking the visitation and engagement at each site. Mora.jp had the largest audience among the group with 1.39 million visitors, closely followed by Morawin.jp with 1.38 million visitors.

Napster had a smaller number of visitors compared to other sites with 171,000 visitors in August, but the site had the highest level of engagement averaging 93 minutes per visitor and the highest frequency of visitation among users with 4.4 average visits per visitor. Indie music site Muzie.co.jp also saw high engagement among its user base, with an average of 21 minutes per visit and 4.1 visits per visitor.

In August, there were 13.6 million iTunes users in Japan, representing almost one quarter of the Japanese Internet audience. Among the five countries included in the study, Japan had the highest penetration of iTunes users and more than double the global reach of 11.2 percent.