With Coldplay now streaming, for free, their new album (which gets released for sale on June 17th) it begs the question, what music is hot and how do you measure it? All I know is that I’m hearing less and less about “record sales” and much more about artists that have the most number of downloads.
This further underscores the fundamental change in the way in which media is being (and will be) distributed as more and more people turn to their computers and iPods/MP3 Players to consume music. Physical media like CDs will soon be a thing of the past and companies like Billboard, who rely on Nielsen Soundscan, for their metrics will find that digital downloads will comprise the largest share of their data.
