Digital-music sales sing 'Stayin' Alive'

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Soundscan numbers ignore the long tail

Soundscan track by the UPC code allocated to the album,i.e. the barcode printed on the CD. That barcode number costs money and none of the long tail sites bother to buy it.

In effect Soundscan sets a precondition to being counted that removes all counting of the long-tail.

There's nothing to stop them today, allocating numbers like:

outlet:IDNumber

e.g.
0000:102938475234

0000 could be the existig UPC numbers.
0001 could be iTunes
0002 could be emusic.

and let the sites allocate the rest of the numbers however they want, UPC or otherwise. Yet Soundscan don't do that and so you should take their figure for 'independants' with a pinch of salt.

Posted by: Nigel Johnstone   Posted on: 10/05/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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