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Download-only Single Becomes UK Number One
Stuart Gibson writes "As predicted, the Gnarls Barkely single 'Crazy' has reached the number one spot on the official UK charts, based solely on legal downloads. The CD version of the single will not be released until tomorrow. This is the first single to be eligible for the honour as, until last month, download sales would only be counted if the track was also available to be bought as a physical copy."
And proof that there will always be some idiot will make wild assumptions re: other's musical tastes.
I bet you don't even know who made this song, you probably think it was some guy named "Gnarls Barkely", nevermind that such a person doesn't actually exist. For your information Gnarls is a collaboration between Cee-lo and DangerMouse. I'm not much of a Cee-lo fan, but DangerMouse is the shit. His Grey Album (half White Album, half Black Album) was as close to bittorrent platinum as an album could be, and DangerDoom (another collaboration, this time with MF Doom) was an awesome hip hop album (you probably hate hip hop, but I guess that's your loss).
At any rate: forget the past of these two artists, this song is awesome and I'm really looking forward to their album.
who used in in one of their BBC radio 1 channel branding idents (which was very cool) where they animated real objects in various real life scenes (street lights , cars , scaffolding, people) to the soundtrack like a VU meter
very cool effect and it worked perfectly with the track, i remember when it first aired people asked me "have you seen that bbc advert" and "i love this track", played often its not suprising the tune did well, this is just like any other adverts that have cool tunes, if its a good tune people will buy/seek it, good music conquers all
AJ
This is the first single to be eligible for the honour as, until last month, download sales would only be counted if the track was also available to be bought as a physical copy.
Readers must note that download-only tracks are not eligible for the UK chart, the rule is that the physical version must be released within one week of the download version. So, it's just a way to get an extra week in the top ten.
And, this song's success isn't solely down to internet hype or hoopla over downloads... it was used on an eye-catching BBC Radio 1 advert that received heavy play on the BBC's channels. Sadly I can't find a link to it, but UK readers will surely know which one I mean. Here's a link to a different Radio 1 ad that uses the same technique.
Not exactly. They didn't just give these downloads away, costing them nothing more than bandwidth. Apple and/or the various giveaway sponsors paid full royalties on these songs. Which is close to a dollar each. Apple doesn't make much if anything on downloads, they make money on hardware.