50-509: The Digital Songs or Digital Song Sales chart (previously named Hot Digital Songs ) ranks the best-selling digital songs in the United States, as compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published by Billboard magazine. Although it originally started tracking song sales the week of October 30, 2004, it officially debuted in the issue dated January 22, 2005, and merged all versions of a song sold from digital music distributors. Its data
100-594: A decision, that the U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main arguments: that Usenet.com was guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most importantly for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com cannot claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision. That ruling states that companies cannot be held liable for contributory infringement if
150-572: A lawsuit against RIAA, alleging that the terms of use of the network were violated and that unauthorized client software was used in the investigation to track down the individual file sharers (such as Kazaa Lite). An effort to throw out this suit was denied in January 2004, but that suit was settled in 2006. Sharman Networks agreed to a global settlement of litigation brought against it by the Motion Picture Association of America,
200-632: A response to expanding technology and needs of customers who wanted and/or needed easy, quick access to music. Their business models respond to the "download revolution" by making legal services attractive for users. Even legal music downloads have faced a number of challenges from artists, record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America . In July 2007, the Universal Music Group decided not to renew their long-term contracts with iTunes. This decision
250-495: A then-recently deceased 83-year-old woman an elderly computer novice, and a family reportedly without any computer at all. In February 2007, RIAA began sending letters accusing Internet users of sharing files and directing them to web site P2PLAWSUITS.COM , where they can make "discount" settlements payable by credit card. The letters go on to say that anyone not settling will have lawsuits brought against them. Typical settlements are between $ 3,000 and $ 12,000. This new strategy
300-460: A third of the list price). In 1975, the additional requirement of 500,000 units sold was added for Gold albums. Reflecting growth in record sales, the Platinum award was added in 1976, for albums able to sell one million units, while singles qualify upon selling two million units. The Multi-Platinum award was introduced in 1984, signifying multiple Platinum levels of albums and singles. In 1989,
350-670: A type of release with 51% or more of its content recorded in Spanish . In 2004, the RIAA added a branch of certification for what it calls "digital" recordings, essentially referring to "recordings transferred to the recipient over a network" (such as those sold via the iTunes Store ) yet excluding other obviously digital media such as those on CD , DAT , or MiniDisc . In 2006, "digital ringtones" were added to this branch of certification. Starting in 2013, streaming from audio and video streaming services such as Spotify , Napster , YouTube and
400-650: Is Busker Busker 's " Cherry Blossom Ending " (2012), which was downloaded over 7 million times between 2012 and 2017. In 2011, " Roly-Poly " by T-ara was the most successful song of the year, selling 4.1 million digital copies. "Roly Poly" also became the fastest-selling song in Korea's history and the first to reach more than 4 million downloads in a calendar year (within 5 months). In 2012, this accolade went to Psy 's " Gangnam Style ", after selling 3.8 million units. Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America ( RIAA )
450-610: Is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States . Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States". RIAA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. RIAA was formed in 1952. Its original mission was to administer recording copyright fees and problems, work with trade unions, and do research relating to
500-423: Is accused of employing techniques such as peer-to-peer "decoying" and " spoofing " to combat file sharing. In late 2008, they announced they would stop their lawsuits, and instead attempt to work with ISPs to persuade them to use a three-strike system for file sharing involving issuing two warnings and then cutting off Internet service after the third strike. RIAA names defendants based on ISP identification of
550-432: Is also suing several Internet radio stations. Later, XM was forced to impose an industry fee upon subscribers. The fee still exists and has always been paid, in-full, directly to RIAA. On October 12, 2007, RIAA sued Usenet.com seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the company from "aiding, encouraging, enabling, inducing, causing, materially contributing to, or otherwise facilitating" copyright infringement . This suit,
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#1732786685667600-562: Is composed of these record executives: The RIAA represents over 1,600 member labels, which are private corporate entities such as record labels and distributors, and collectively create and distribute about 90% of recorded music sold in the United States. The largest and most influential of the members are the "Big Three": Within the major three music groups, it represents high-profile record labels such as Atlantic , Capitol , RCA , Warner , Columbia , and Motown . The RIAA reports that total retail value of recordings sold by their members
650-649: The Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format used by iTunes as well as the MP3 audio coding format . According to a Nielsen report, downloadable music accounted for 55.9 percent of all music sales in the US in 2012. By the beginning of 2011, Apple's iTunes Store alone made US$ 1.1 billion of revenue in the first quarter of its fiscal year. According to the RIAA , music downloads peaked at 43% of industry revenue in
700-575: The DeCSS controversy. On February 4, 2022, Mitch Glazier swiftly took action against NFT scam site HitPiece . The site had allegedly stole music to mint as NFTs, and host them on their site. Since then, HitPiece has only responded with "We Started The Conversation And We're Listening." However, their site has not been updated since. RIAA is heavily criticized for both policy and for their method of suing individuals for copyright infringement. Particularly strong critic-advocates are Internet-based, such as
750-666: The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry , and by RIAA. The creators of the popular Kazaa file-sharing network would pay $ 115 million to RIAA, plus unspecified future amounts to MPAA and the software industry; and, they would install filters on its networks to prevent users from sharing copyrighted works on its network. RIAA also filed suit in 2006 to enjoin digital XM Satellite Radio from enabling its subscribers from playing songs they had recorded from its satellite broadcasts. It
800-570: The collective rights management of sound recordings, and it is responsible for certifying gold and platinum albums and singles in the United States. Mitch Glazier has been the RIAA's chairman and CEO since 2019. Glazier joined the RIAA 20 years ago and has played a role in the music industry's transition to streaming and "anywhere, anytime" access to music. He was the RIAA's senior executive vice president from 2011 to 2019 and served as executive vice president for public policy and industry relations from 2000 to 2011. The 26-member board of directors
850-731: The 1992 Audio Home Recording Act . The Rio PMP300 was significant because it was the second portable consumer MP3 digital audio player released on the market. The three-judge panel ruled in favor of Diamond, paving the way for the development of the portable digital player market. In 2003, RIAA sued college student developers of LAN search engines Phynd and Flatlan, describing them as "a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery". In September 2003, RIAA filed suit in civil court against several private individuals who had shared large numbers of files with Kazaa . Most of these suits were settled with monetary payments averaging $ 3,000. Kazaa publisher Sharman Networks responded with
900-412: The RIAA choosing the number of works it deems "reasonable". For cases that do not settle at this amount, the RIAA has gone to trial, seeking statutory damages from the jury, written into The Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 as between $ 750 and $ 30,000 per work or $ 750 and $ 150,000 per work if "willful". The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen oppose
950-775: The RIAJ. The first was Songs for Japan (2011), a charity compilation album raising profits for the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , which was certified gold for 100,000 downloads in June 2011. The second album was the Japanese language cast recording of the Frozen soundtrack, which sold 100,000 copies between its release in March 2014 and January 2015. In South Korea, Circle Digital Chart has been tracking digital sales since 2009. The most successful song according to their published data
1000-422: The US in 2012, and has since fallen to 3% in 2022. Paid downloads are sometimes encoded with digital rights management that restricts copying the music or playing purchased songs on certain digital audio players. They are almost always compressed using a lossy codec (usually MPEG-1 Layer 3, Windows Media, or AAC), which reduces file size and bandwidth requirements. These music resources have been created as
1050-438: The United States was held by Gwen Stefani 's " Hollaback Girl ", which sold over one million downloads, making it the first song to achieve platinum download status. As of July 2012 , the record for the best-selling downloaded single in the United States on the iTunes Store is held by The Black Eyed Peas 's " I Gotta Feeling ", which has sold over 8 million downloads. Soon after his death in 2009, Michael Jackson became
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#17327866856671100-778: The United States. Their stated goal is to support artists' creativity and help them not be cheated out of money by illegal downloading. The Recording Industry Association of America launched its first lawsuits on the 8th of September 2003, against individuals who illegally downloaded music files from the Kazaa FastTrack network. Two years after it began, the campaign survived at least one major legal challenge. The RIAA said it filed 750 suits in February 2006 against individuals downloading music files without paying for them in hopes of putting an end to Internet music piracy . The RIAA hopes their campaign will force people to respect
1150-475: The ability of RIAA and other companies to "strip Internet users of anonymity without allowing them to challenge the order in court". Importantly, US Courts have declared that an IP address is not a person nor personal identifier. This weakened RIAA's ability to sue individuals. RIAA's methods of identifying individual users had, in some rare cases, led to the issuing of subpoenas to persons dead or otherwise incapable of file-sharing. Two such examples include:
1200-591: The album sold 430,000 digital copies. Adele's third studio album 25 became the fastest-selling album in a week in iTunes history after it was released on 20 November 2015. It sold 1.64 million digital copies in its first week (included preorders on the iTunes store since the release of the album's lead single "Hello" in October 2015). In 2006, the Recording Industry Association of Japan began issuing certifications for digitally released music in Japan, compiling data from
1250-404: The association began its campaign against peer-to-peer file-sharing have concluded that losses incurred per download range from negligible to moderate. The association has commenced high-profile lawsuits against file-sharing service providers. Likewise, it has sued individuals suspected of file sharing, notably college students, parents of file-sharing children and at least one dead person. It
1300-474: The beginning of the 2000s Napster was sued due to mass infringement of music ownership copyrights by the record industry- a sue which issued a preliminary injunction for the service and was concluded by the closure of the Napster free music sharing between its users. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) oversees about 85 percent of published music production, distribution and manufacturing in
1350-605: The benefit of the RIAA and invited the students and subscribers to visit an RIAA website for the purpose of entering into a "discount settlement" payable by credit card. By March 2007, the focus had shifted from ISPs to colleges and universities. In October 1998, RIAA filed a lawsuit in the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco claiming the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 player violated
1400-469: The change when it came to light. The battle over the disputed provision led to the formation of the Recording Artists' Coalition , which successfully lobbied for repeal of the change. On October 23, 2020, the code repository hosting service GitHub (owned by Microsoft ) released a DMCA request from RIAA. This request listed the open-source software project youtube-dl (and forks of
1450-483: The copyrights of music labels and eventually minimize the number of illegal downloads. The Official Charts Company began to incorporate downloads in the UK Singles Chart on 17 April 2005, at which time Radio 1 stopped broadcasting the separate download chart, although the chart is still compiled. Initially this was on condition that the song must have a physical media release at the same time; this rule
1500-419: The device they create is "capable of significant noninfringing uses". Furthermore, the parties had appealed to a federal court for damage assessments and awards, which could amount to several millions of dollars for the music industry. On October 26, 2010, RIAA members won a case against LimeWire, a P2P file-sharing network, for illegal distribution of copyrighted works. On October 29, in retaliation, riaa.org
1550-420: The early 2000s onwards. The best-selling song is Fukushima -based vocal group Greeeen 's song " Kiseki " (2008), which was certified for being legally downloaded four million times between 2008 and 2015, followed by R&B singer Thelma Aoyama 's " Soba ni Iru ne " (2008) featuring rapper SoulJa , which was certified for three million downloads between 2008 and 2014. Greeeen's song " Ai Uta " (2007) ranks as
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1600-406: The final markup of a "technical corrections" section of copyright legislation, classifying many music recordings as " works made for hire ", thereby stripping artists of their copyright interests and transferring those interests to their record labels. Shortly afterwards, Glazier was hired as Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Legislative Counsel for the RIAA, which vigorously defended
1650-692: The first artist to sell over one million songs downloaded via the Internet in one week. However, Adele marks the most downloads sold by a single song in a week, with " Hello " selling 1.12 million copies in November 2015. Eminem 's seventh studio album, Recovery (2010), became the first album to sell one million digital copies. Beyoncé 's self-titled fifth studio album became the fastest-selling album within 24 hours in iTunes history after its release in December 2013. Within 24 hours of availability,
1700-452: The first that RIAA has filed against a Usenet provider, has added another branch to RIAA's rapidly expanding fight to curb the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials . Unlike many of RIAA's previous lawsuits, this suit was filed against the provider of a service. Providers have no direct means of removing infringing content. RIAA's argument relies heavily on the fact the Usenet.com,
1750-484: The formula for album-equivalent unit . For certification purposes, each unit may be one of: Along with albums, digital albums, and singles, another classification of music release is called "video longform". This release format includes DVD and VHS releases. Further, certain live albums and compilation albums are counted. The certification criteria are slightly different from other styles. RIAA opposes unauthorized sharing of its members' music. Studies conducted since
1800-667: The issue dated November 30, 2024 is "Running Wild" by Jin . Source: Source: Music download A music download (commonly referred to as a digital download ) is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer , portable media player , MP3 player or smartphone . This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyrighted material without permission or legal payment. Music downloads are typically encoded with modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) audio data compression , particularly
1850-696: The likes also began to be counted towards the certification, using the formula of 100 streams being the equivalent of one download; thus, RIAA certification for singles no longer reflects actual sales. In the same year, the RIAA introduced the Latin Digital Award for digital recordings in Spanish. As of 2016 , the certification criteria for these recordings are: Digital awards: The units are defined as: Latin digital awards: In February 2016, RIAA updated its certification criteria for album-level awards to combine streaming and track sales using
1900-513: The only defendant that had been named, promoted their service with slogans and phrases that strongly suggested that the service could be used to obtain free music. On April 28, 2008, RIAA member labels sued Project Playlist, a web music search site, claiming that most of the sound recordings in the site's index of links are infringing. Project Playlist's website denies that any of the music is hosted on Project Playlist's own servers. On June 30, 2009, RIAA prevailed in its fight against Usenet.com, in
1950-485: The project) as copyright violations . The request cited the United States law Title 17 U.S.C. §1201 . Critics of this action say that the software library can be used by archivists to download videos of social injustice. According to Parker Higgins, former Director of Copyright Activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this takedown request was a "throwback threat" analogous to
2000-399: The record industry and government regulations. Early RIAA standards included the RIAA equalization curve, the format of the stereophonic record groove and the dimensions of 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpm records. RIAA says its current mission includes: Between 2001 and 2020, RIAA spent between $ 2.4 million and $ 6.5 million annually on lobbying in the United States. RIAA also participates in
2050-498: The sales level associated with a particular award depends on when the award was made. Since 2000, the RIAA also operates a similar program for Latin music sales, called Los Premios de Oro y De Platino . Currently, a "Disco De Oro" (Gold) is awarded for 30,000 units, and a "Disco De Platino" is awarded for 60,000 units. Further, the "Album Multi-Platino" honor is awarded at 120,000, and "Diamante" requires 10 times as many units as "Platino" (600,000). The RIAA defines "Latin music" as
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2100-459: The sales thresholds for singles were reduced to 500,000 for Gold and 1,000,000 for Platinum, reflecting a decrease in sales of singles. In 1992, RIAA began counting each disc in a multi-disc set as one unit toward certification. Reflecting additional growth in music sales, the Diamond award was instituted in 1999 for albums or singles selling ten million units. Because of these changes in criteria,
2150-474: The subscriber associated with an IP address , and as such do not know any additional information about a person before they sue. After an Internet subscriber's identity is discovered, but before an individual lawsuit is filed, the subscriber is typically offered an opportunity to settle. The standard settlement is a payment to RIAA and an agreement not to engage in file sharing of music. Such suits are also usually on par with statutory damages of $ 750 per work, with
2200-500: The third highest certified song, with 2.5 million downloads tracked between 2007 and 2009. Two more songs have sold more than two million paid downloads: Ayaka 's " Mikazuki " (2006) and Kobukuro 's " Tsubomi " (2007). The most successful ringtone in Japan is Moldovan-Romanian band O-Zone 's " Dragostea din tei " (2003), known locally as "Koi no Maiahi" ( 恋のマイアヒ ) , which was certified as having four million units sold. In Japan, only two albums have received digital certifications by
2250-468: Was $ 10.4 billion at the end of 2007, a decline from $ 14.6 billion in 1999. Estimated retail revenues from recorded music in the United States grew 11.4% in 2016 to $ 7.7 billion. The RIAA operates an award program for albums that sell a large number of copies. The award was launched in 1958; originally, the requirement for a Gold single was one million units sold and a Gold album represented $ 1 million in sales (at wholesale value, around
2300-469: Was formed because the RIAA's legal fees were cutting into the income from settlements. In 2008, RIAA sued 19-year-old Ciara Sauro for allegedly sharing 10 songs online. RIAA also launched an "early settlement program" directed to ISPs and to colleges and universities, urging them to pass along letters to subscribers and students offering early settlements, prior to the disclosure of their identities. The settlement letters urged ISPs to preserve evidence for
2350-557: Was fully lifted on 1 January 2007, meaning all download sales are now eligible in the chart. Music downloads have been measured by the Official Charts Company since 2004 and included in the main UK Singles Chart from 2005. Up to November 2022, the most-streamed song in the UK is " Someone You Loved " by Lewis Capaldi , with over 562 million streams. In November 2005, the record for the best-selling downloaded single in
2400-548: Was incorporated in the Hot 100 three weeks later. Since October 2004, digital sales have been incorporated into many of Billboard ' s music singles charts. The decision was based on the dramatic increase of the digital market while commercial single sales in a physical format were becoming negligible. The first number one song on the Digital Songs chart was " Just Lose It " by Eminem . The chart's current number one as of
2450-625: Was primarily based on the issue of pricing of songs, as Universal wanted to be able to charge more or less depending on the artist, a shift away from iTunes' standard—at the time—99 cents per song pricing. Many industry leaders feel that this is only the first of many show-downs between Apple Inc. and the various record labels. According to research by the website TorrentFreak , 38 percent of Swedish artists support file share downloading and claim that it helps artists in early career stages. Artists, including Swedish rock group Lamont, have profited from file sharing. The recording industry vs Napster: In
2500-603: Was taken offline via denial-of-service attacks executed by members of Operation Payback and Anonymous . RIAA filed briefs in Allen v. Cooper , which was decided in 2020. The Supreme Court of the United States abrogated the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act as unconstitutional, while RIAA had argued the opposite view. In 1999, Mitch Glazier, a Congressional staff attorney, inserted, without public notice or comment, substantive language into
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