KEY POINTS:
Following up on yesterday's post about the demise of music download website Coketunes.co.nz, the local music industry has now taken the move to include digital song downloads in the country's music charts.
Effectively, a song or album downoaded to your computer or mobile phone will be treated and counted the same as a song or album bought from a music retailer.
The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand says 40,000 tracks are legally downloaded each week in New Zealand from the likes of Amplifier, Digirama, Telecom and Vodafone's music stores and iTunes, which opened here in November.
If the figure is accurate, that equates to an industry worth around $3.7 million a year assuming an average per-track price of $1.80, which which would seem to spread revenue quite thinly among a number of players. Still it is early days and growth is likely to be double digit for years to come.
An independent company, Radioscope, will combine the sales figures from the participants to determine which tracks are selling the best. RIANZ says it is confident the figures can't be "fudged".
Interestingly, digital album sales are negligible at present. People are obviously picking and choosing the best two or three tracks from an album to download. I t would be interesting to see a break down of digital song sales by supplier to see what impact iTunes has had, but that information isn't being divulged.
Will this change the face of the charts? Probably the singles charts. But what will it mean for New Zealand music? Is a local song less likely to go to number one where digital single sales are accounted for? I doubt it will make much difference as the marketing efforts on the major download websites are usually tightly integrated with those of retailers. If anything, it may allow some smaller bands to climb higher than they would have before.
