The U.S. music industry last week passed a major milestone when the best-selling paid download, Hey Ya by Outkast, sold more copies than the top-ranking commercial single, I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.
According to Billboard, which publishes the official U.S. music charts, Outkast sold 8,000 downloads via a variety of services, while the MercyMe single sold 7,000 units.
Compared to those numbers, the Australian market looks positively blooming. Despite a much smaller population, Australia's current number one single, Kylie Minogue's Slow, sold 13,037 copies in its first week, according to music news site Undercover, which leaked the official Australian Recording Industry Association sales figures.
The Minogue track has achieved this success despite being made available as a paid download -- the first for a major chart act in Australia -- and also achieving widespread pirate distribution on networks such as Kazaa and WinMX. While digital download services such as Apple's iTunes have been successful in the U.S., none have yet launched in the local market. A number of players, including Telstra and Destra, plan to introduce services before the end of the year.
I think if there were statistics showing the number of australians who had downloaded the new kylie single "slow" from p2p file trading services, this obviously ignorant reporter would have egg over his face.