Traffic levels to music download sites on Christmas Day and the week following Christmas indicate the sheer number people that received iPods, iTunes gift cards, or mp3 players this holiday season. Here’s a rundown of the facts – note that Hitwise does not track visits to the music downloading applications, only to the Internet domains (e.g., www.apple.com/itunes).

• Visits to the top music download sites were up 83% for the last week of the year (week ending 12/31/05) versus the prior week (week ending 12/24/05), and up 183% compared to last year (week ending 12/31/05 versus week ending 1/1/05).

• The peak day in 2005 for visits to Apple’s iTunes site, the leading music download site, was Christmas Day, in which visits were up 397% versus the previous Sunday (12/18/05) and up 292% over Christmas Day last year.

It makes sense that so many people would be visiting music download sites on Christmas Day and the days following, as search terms related to ipods and MP3 players accounted for 5 of the top 20 terms sending visits to Shopping & Classifieds sites during the peak of the online holiday shopping season (4 weeks ending 12/17/05).