The British pop chart will undergo one of the biggest shake-ups since its inception 54 years ago on Sunday when any song downloaded from the Internet will be able to compete for the number one single spot.

Up to now, only songs which were physically available for purchase in shops counted toward the weekly chart.

Downloads could be included, but only a week before an actual CD single went on sale and for two weeks after it stopped appearing in stores.

This Sunday’s number one could be any track whether it has been sold in stores or online.

It said the “dramatic development” would be more reflective of what music Britons were buying, and could mean that old tunes, tracks by unknown artists or unreleased songs on albums hitting the top of the charts.

“This new ruling changes the nature of a single and puts the consumer in the driving seat,” said OCC director Steve Redmond.

“Literally any track can be a hit — as long as it sells enough.”

“For a long time we’ve wanted the chart to reflect what the consumers are actually buying,” said a spokesman for the BPI, the British record industry’s trade body.

(FULL ARTICLE HERE)

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Album sales

2006: 588.2 million
2005: 618.9 million
2004: 666.7 million
2003: 656.2 million

Track downloads
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2006: 581.9 million
2005: 352.7 million
2004: 140.9 million
2003: 19.2 million

Top 10 albums

1. High School Musical: 3.72 million

2. Rascal Flatts/Me and My Gang: 3.48 million

3. Carrie Underwood/Some Hearts: 3.02 million

4. Nickelback/All the Right Reasons: 2.69 million

5. Justin Timberlake/Futuresex/Lovesounds: 2.38 million

6. James Blunt/Back to Bedlam: 2.14 million

7. Beyonce/B’day: 2.01 million

8. Hannah Montana: 1.99 million

9. Dixie Chicks/Taking the Long Way: 1.86 million

10. Hinder/Extreme Behavior: 1.82 million

Top 10 digital songs:

1. Daniel Powter/Bad Day: 2.02 million

2. Nelly Furtado/Promiscuous: 1.71 milion

3. Justin Timberlake/SexyBack: 1.66 million

4. Gnarls Barkley/Crazy: 1.63 million

5. James Blunt/You’re Beautiful: 1.62 million

6. Fray/Over My Head: 1.57 million

7. Fray/How to Save a Life: 1.56 million

8. Sean Paul/Temperature: 1.53 million

9. Chamillionaire/Ridin’: 1.42 million

10. Shakira/Hips Don’t Lie: 1.41 million.
(USATODAY)

• A ‘New’ Station for New York
  CBS Radio launched Fresh 102.7. that will focus on songs released in the last decade. The target audience is women (25-44). Programming will include artists like John Mayer, James Blunt, Alicia Keys, Marc Anthony, The Fray and Dido.
• Kids turn to a ‘New’ Website WITHOUT Rules
  Social networks like MySpace and YouTube have decided against allowing conversations over live video because of the potential for abuse and opposition from child-safety advocates. New start ups like Stickam will do whatever they can to “attract” eyeballs and often at the price taste, ethics and child safety. Stickam mostly attracts young people comfortable with the idea of a continuous self-produced reality TV show starring themselves.

Companies that offer Web cam chats say that the technology seems to attract abuse. “There are just some people who, if you give them a Web cam, are going to take off their clothes,� said Jason Katz, founder of PalTalk

Warner Brothers opened a page on the service for two of its artists, Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone, and trained a Web cam on them as they recorded a music video.

• U.S. digital download sales hit a new all-time high in the week after Christmas with 30.1 million tracks sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sales of digital albums were up, with volume of just over 1 million bundles – the first time digital album volume has crossed the million plateau for a single week. (Billboard)

• XM and Sirius continue to talk about a potential merger.
• According to the LA Times, revenues from digital downloads and mobile content is expected to be flat or, in some cases, decline next year. Rather than pushing the panick button industry some executives are pushing for the right to sell digital downloads as unprotected MP3s. Revenues from digital music has not made up the loss from the declining physical CD sales. Revenue from digital music has yet to offset losses from still-declining CD sales.

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YouTube was supposed to deliver the great news on saturday. The news was to deliver a system to prevent piracy of copyrighted music. But the phone never rang and they disappeared into oblivion ready to celebrate the new year. Another broken promise.

The agreement between Warner and YouTune is to create and install an “advanced content identification and royalty reporting system”. Warner agreed to let YouTube distribute its library of music videos, artist interviews, and other content and allow people to incorporate the music from its catalogue into works they create and post on the website. YouTube vowed to have a piracy-prevention system in place by year’s end as a caveat of the “first-of-its-kind” alliance to sell Warner music and share the revenues.
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Missing the self-imposed deadline would be a big stumble for YouTube, but it could recover its footing by getting the system in place within a week or two, according to industry analyst Michael McGuire of Gartner Research.
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“It is hugely important, especially from the rights holders’ perspective, that the best efforts are being made to corral the stuff flowing through YouTube,” said McGuire.
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“Rights holders are making specific bets on paths of distribution and are expecting serious effort to make uncontrolled distribution difficult for most folks to do.”
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Google and YouTube are not at a point where they can compensate for potential piracy problems by cashing in on the video-viewing audience, according to McGuire.