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Radio 1 to celebrate ten years of counting downloads this Easter
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 10 April 2014
Remember when putting download sales stats into the official charts was a debate? Remember that? Well do you? I do. Those were the days, weren’t they?
Having to put out nine copies of a track on CD single so your iTunes stats would count in the chart. Suing the fans. Sticking DRM onto CDs so that they crashed people’s computers. Not allowing tracks to be sold as MP3 so that only iTunes could sell iPod-compatible music, rendering every other download store in the world pointless. I think in future decades, when future generations look back, that’ll be always held up as the record industry’s greatest age.
Anyway, it’s nearly ten years since the iTunes store launched in the UK, and the official UK download chart followed soon after that (though only after months of music downloaded via the seminal MyCokeMusic service had gone uncounted – which meant at least tens of sales were lost to the system).
And to mark that magnificent occasion, Radio 1 will present the The Official All-Time (Minus All The Mycokemusic Stats No One Counted) Download Top 100 on Easter Monday (aka 21 Apr). And if ever there was a way to mark the torture, death and resurrection of Christ, that is surely it. It’s what he would have wanted.
Look, here’s Radio 1 music man, the Rev George Ergatoudis, more or less saying just that: “Downloads started arguably the biggest revolution in the history of the music industry, transforming the way audiences discover and enjoy music. After a decade of legal downloading in the UK it’s time for Radio 1 to celebrate with a countdown revealing the nation’s Top 100 most downloaded songs. Given how much choice and how quickly music fans can now access their favourite songs, there may be a few surprises in store!”
And who doesn’t like surprises? So let’s all gather to celebrate ten years of music downloads – quick, before the download market crashes and burns and there’s nothing left to celebrate.
