Digital download

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1 Music Industry
2 Computer Industry
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Music Industry

A digital download (also known as a digital single or a paid digital download) is an official and legal music single available for purchase through an online store. Popular examples of online music stores that sell digital singles and albums include Apple's iTunes and Napster.

Digital downloads are often encoded with DRM that restrict making additional copies of the music or play purchased songs on a playing device from a competing hardware manufacturer. For example, songs purchased from Apple's iTunes will only play on Apple's iPod. A way to get around DRM is to burn purchased songs to a CD, then transfer them onto the computer again from the CD in the desired unprotected format. This results in a slight loss of sound quality due to additional encoding/decoding of the music (called transcoding).

Legal music downloads have existed since 2000. Paid digital download may suffer from the development of techniques enabling the digital extraction of songs played on the radio which, although offering lower quality sound, is also legal.

[edit] United States

Legal music downloads were first compiled by Billboard in 2003, but they didn't gain mainstream acceptance in the United States until around February 2005, when digital sales for singles started to be included in the Billboard Hot 100 and other Billboard charts. In the year before, the Hot 100 chart was very similar to the Hot 100 Airplay chart, because there were only minor CD-single sales affecting the chart. The inclusion of digital singles has immensely helped many songs chart and peak higher, including Jessica Simpson's cover of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" which became her second-highest peaking Hot 100 single thanks to digital sales. Another example is Britney Spears's "Do Somethin'" which wasn't released as a radio single, but charted in 2005 due to top-fifty (number forty-nine) digital sales.

[edit] RIAA Certification and American records

Single certifications were introduced in February 2005. Songs that sell a certain number of copies are often certified by the RIAA with the permission of the artist and the record company.

In November 2005, the record for the bestselling digital single in the United States was held by Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl", which has sold over one million downloads, making it the first song to achieve diamond download status. Since then, "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter has overcome it in terms of sales to become the bestselling digital single. The highest week sales was held by "Gold Digger" by hip-hop star Kanye West. (It is now held by "Fergalicious" by Fergie when she sold 295,000 downloads one week in January, certifing her platinum in just one week.) The single beat the previous record holder, Gwen Stefani, in the week of September 8, 2005, and has sold enough copies to be certified quadruple platinum. The song also is responsible for ending Mariah Carey's fourteen week run of her come-back single, "We Belong Together". The underground dance music scene has not been left out either with the digital download network Beatport.com hitting its one million download mark in 2005.

[edit] United Kingdom

The UK Official Download Chart was launched on September 1, 2004, and included any Permanent Digital Download track, under 10 minutes long, being sold for a minimum price of 40p (0.4 GBP). In January 2005, downloaded tracks outsold physical singles for the first time in UK music history, prompting The Official UK Charts Company to incorporate downloads for the first time into the UK Singles Chart on April 17, 2005.

On December 16, 2006, the winner of The X Factor, Leona Lewis had her single "A Moment Like This" released for download. 50,000 tracks were downloaded in under 30 minutes, believed to be a record.^[1]

[edit] Japan

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Japan has the highest amount of digital downloads sold in the world. The highest selling digital single there, and the world, is Keep Tryin' by Utada Hikaru with 2.5 million paid downloads. The runner-up is Koi no Tsubomi by Kumi Koda with 2.3 million paid downloads.

[edit] Computer Industry

In the computer industry, software purchased and downloaded from an online store is called a digital download. Often the download will be available immediately after the buyer's credit card has been charged. The benefit of digital downloads is thus the little time it takes to receive a desired product. The drawback is that the buyer does not get any tangible product (no disc, box or manual, for example).