With the debut of ARIA's digital tracks chart yesterday, it is found out that Australia's music fans are increasingly using the Internet as the means for getting their music.
"Topped by Youth Group's enduring cover of the Alphaville song Forever Young, the top 10 tracks on the first digital chart were not remarkably different from the ARIA top 10 singles.
"But devoted fans who could not wait for Kanye West's new single Touch The Sky, which was released to retail outlets on Saturday, snapped up the online version, propelling it to No.5.
"Mary J. Blige's duet with U2 on their classic song One also entered the top 40 digital tracks at No.22 and was downloaded from her latest album, The Breakthrough. It is not yet been scheduled for retail release."
Australia has been slower to respond to the digital revolution as the US and Britain music industry has been tracking digital downloads for almost two years.
According to ARIA CEO Stephen Peach, he believes that the tracking will reveal that their is a much larger number of Australians downloading than previously thought and that it will also reveal that a number of songs actually have longer shelf life than expected.
Another tremendous benefit is the ability for music companies to test singles online before they put the money into an official release, which could save the companies a lot of money. This is in truth a great idea and benefit.
While downloads only accounted for under 2 percent of music sales in Australia last year, it is expected to be closer to 6 percent of sales in 2006, due in large part to the growing popularity of iTunes.
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