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Half a billion downloads sold

By | Published on Friday 17 September 2010

So, half a billion downloads have now been sold in the UK, or so say the Official Charts Company and, hard as I try, I can’t think of any reason why they’d lie about these things.

I’m also going to repeat their maths without double checking. This apparently equates to eight tracks for every member of the UK population including, I think, those in cots, prison cells and comas. So, well done to babies, criminals and coma patients. Meanwhile, you’d need 42,000 60GB MP3 players to hold all that music, and an awful lot of power sockets to keep them all charged.

Remarking on the half of billion landmark, chief charts man Martin Talbot stopped counting for just one minute and told CMU: “The surpassing of this latest landmark highlights just how enthusiastically music consumers have taken to legitimate music download services in the UK. Sales are continuing to grow too, thanks to the popularity of artists such as Owl City, Eminem, Usher, Katy Perry and Rihanna”.

Not wishing to spoil the party, but, as you may or may not know, my iMac was dropped while we were at the Edinburgh Festival this summer and my hard disk destroyed. This means I’ve lost all the songs I’ve ever bought from iTunes, probably about 300. As iTunes won’t replace them, even though they know I’ve paid for them, I feel those 300 tracks should be deleted from the count. So, ladies and gentlemen, this just in, 999,999,700 downloads sold in the UK.



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