What happened next…the compromise.
There came a point where the Us vs Them had to be comprimised.
The online users needed an alternative, whilst the music industry was becoming desperate to stem the flow of illegal downloads. The result was the introduction to the online music charts. Introducing legal downloads that would contribute towards the charts.
UK – September 2004
USA – Febuary 2005
The effects were instant[1]…
- “Sales of legally downloaded songs shot up more than tenfold in 2004, with 200 million track purchased online in the US and Europe in 12 months”
- In 2004, for the 1st time ever, the UK downloads overtook the sales of physical singles. “The last week of December 2004 saw download sales of 312,000 compared with 282,000 physical singles”.
- “Westlife’s Flying Without Wings – a 1999 track reissued for the occasion – was the first number one of the UK download chart.”
The legal downloads came courtesy of a number of providers…
The Result
”US hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley have become the first act to score a UK number one single on the strength of digital sales alone.”[2]
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Rock band Snow Patrol are back in the UK top 10 after rules were changed to allow any song purchased online to be counted towards the singles chart.[3] |
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