Milestone: First million-selling download

I had not seen this until today, and thought it was interesting, and certainly Top 40 related.

From Digital Music News:

GWEN STEFANI TRACK CROSSES ONE MILLION DOWNLOADS

Date: October, 2005 (100405)

Digital music has achieved its first million-selling single track — Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”. Taken from her debut album, titled Love. Angel. Music. Baby., the track has achieved over one million download sales since its debut last year. Sales of the track are currently running at about 15,000 per week, spurred by a highly accessible and catchy musical approach. UK music magazine NME last year described the album as “one of the most frivolously brilliant slabs of shiny retro-pop anyone's had the chuzpah to release all year.” The single has been selling through digital outlets like iTunes, MSN, Napster, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart, MusicMatch, and Sony Connect.

Other formats are also selling well. The track is ready to cross the million-mark in master ringtone sales, a growing market for labels. Reflecting CD sales only, "Hollaback Girl" hit number one on the US Billboard Pop chart and crossed into the top ten on the R&B/Hip-Hop charts. The album is now a certified triple platinum release. "Gwen is one of the most forward-thinking and innovative artists in music today. That she would make history with digital downloads just emphasizes her role as a leader in so many ways for a new generation and for music,” said Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine. “The music industry is changing and this is a major sign that digital downloading has reached the mass market and become a very significant business."

Brian:

I'm glad you clarified the platinum certifications because before reading your post I was under the false impression that the five times platinum certification for Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" reflected five million paid downloads of her single, when in reality the sales number is one million. I don't know why the RIAA can't just issue gold certifications for singles at 500,000 downloads and platinum certs at one million, like they do for album sales. Single downloads are going to continue to grow in popularity and it won't be long before it becomes commonplace for songs to push half a million and one million downloads.

Your questions about how the RIAA monitors downloads sales are good ones, Brian. I've also wondered if the RIAA takes into consideration consumers who subscribe to services like the one on Napster that allows unlimited downloads for a monthly fee. Does this mean someone with such an account can infinitely keep downloading the same songs over and over to help push their favorite songs up the national music charts?

Edited by Todd Ireland

Has it really been over 13 years since I made that first post in this thread? Well, I guess 13 years isn't a bad run for the million-selling download. Because according to the new 2018 Year-End Report from BuzzAngle Music:

In 2018 there was not a single song that broke one million sales. In 2017, there were only 14 songs that sold more than one million song downloads compared to 36 in 2016 and 60 songs in 2015.

http://www.buzzanglemusic.com/wp-content/uploads/BuzzAngle-M usic-2018-US-Report-Industry.pdf

Interesting report, as usual, but I really miss the specific song and artist numbers they've quoted in their reports of years past.