Paid download

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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 the iTunes Store and Napster. Not only is digital downloading for music there are also audio books and travel guides which can be found at sight such as Lodingo and Audible. Downloads are often encoded with Digital Rights Management that restricts making extra copies of the music or play purchased songs on certain digital audio players.

Paid digital download may face competition from the development of techniques enabling the digital extraction of songs played on the radio which, although offering lower quality sound, is also legal.

1 Current status
- 1.1 United States
  - 1.1.1 RIAA certification and American records
- 1.2 Japan
2 See also
3 References

[edit] Current status

[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 similar to the Hot 100 Airplay chart, because only minor CD-single sales affected 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' "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 Kanye West. It is now held by "Low" by rapper Flo-Rida when the single sold 470,000 downloads one week in January 2008, certifing the single double platinum in just one week. The single beat the previous record holder, Fergie's 2006 single "Fergalicious". 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. In addition aritsts like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson have singles selling over 2 million downloads with "Before He Cheats" with 2,438,897 downloads and "Breakaway" with 2,098,056.

[edit] Japan

Japan has the highest amount of digital downloads sold in the world. The highest selling digital single in Japan, and the world, is Flavor Of Life by Utada Hikaru with 7.7 million legal downloads ^[1]. The runner-up is Keep Tryin' also by Utada Hikaru with 2.5 million paid downloads. The third is Koi no Tsubomi by Kumi Koda with 2.3 million paid downloads.