USA Today declared Amazon the number two source for digital music downloads (legal, of course) the other day, behind Apple’s iTunes store, after being around for half a year. Of course, former #2 eMusic isn’t happy with this, so they’ve quietly started a protest campaign with a little blog posting from the CEO of eMusic.

I’d like to address both of these points. First, allow me to point out that no sales or market share figures were cited in the USA Today piece. In fact, the article states that Amazon “won’t say how many songs Amazon has sold but will say that consumers love the experience.” Is that enough for USA Today to make such a bold pronouncement, particularly when there is plenty of widely available evidence to the contrary?

While Amazon isn’t willing to make sales data available, we are more than happy to: eMusic sells more than 7,000,000 songs a month. Seven million tracks of independent music covering everything from Cat Power to Miles Davis. Since Amazon opened its MP3 store on September 25, 2007, eMusic has sold 40,000,000 tracks. Since November of 2003, we have sold almost 200,000,000 songs. These are huge numbers, and firmly back our claims to be the #1 site for independent music and the #2 digital music service after iTunes. Those declarations have not previously been disputed.

Number two, three or twenty three, it doesn’t matter to me. Amazon’s become my de facto choice for buying mp3s for myself, The Wife™ of the little one, it’s just so easy and pleasant to use.

Spread the word!