Top 50 singles charts to include downloads

THE Irish are turning into a nation of music downloaders as we turn away from conventional compact discs and buy songs online to be played on computers, iPods and mobile phones.

From next month, the Top 50 singles chart will rank records according to how many copies are downloaded straight to computers as well as how many are sold on traditional CD, vinyl and cassette formats.

Now music industry bosses say downloading — or getting songs sent via the internet as audio files — is the future of music in Ireland.

Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) boss Dick Doyle said: “When downloads first came into the UK Top 40 singles chart, they accounted for 14% of sales but it is now equal to the number of sales of actual CDs. We expect to follow this trend over the coming years.”

Last year, Irish music fans downloaded about 1.85 million songs online at 99c a tune, making the online market alone worth a cool €1.83 million.

Ireland’s most popular internet site where songs can be bought is Apple’s iTunes site, which has a catalogue of two million songs from acts as diverse as Abba, Charlotte Church, Robbie Williams and Frank Zappa.

Users log on to the iTunes website, pay for the single or album they want and then a programme containing the music arrives on their computer. They can then transfer this file to a blank compact disc or they can send the file to a portable music player such as an iPod.

They can buy albums as cheap as €9.99 and singles as low as 99c because the website cuts out the costs of making a CD and also the expense of distribution via a record store.

Last year, sales of music, both online and in the form of CDs, records and tapes, amounted to €115m in Ireland with downloading only a small fraction of the amount. But from July 1 when the new-style charts come in, industry experts expect downloading to start gaining a greater market share.

IRMA says the arrival of the iTunes website in Ireland means sales will increasingly be via the net instead of high street shops.

Eircom Music Club, which is one of Ireland’s top three downloading sites, with 73,000 users said: “The popularity of the site is increasing — around one-third of our broadband customers are users of the music club site.”

Music files from sites such as iTunes are encoded to prevent piracy.

The computerised protection — known as digital rights management (DRM) — was brought in to stem the losses to artists from illegal downloading sites, which offer tunes for free or rock-bottom prices.

IRMA reckons one-in-three songs available on the net is unauthorised but says measures such as DRM and prosecutions of downloaders are having an effect.

Mr Doyle said: “The best international figures show for the first time that the number of people downloading legally has surpassed the numbers downloading illegally. I don’t think it will be much different here.”