juanes

How record labels can cash in on digital sales

Mary Jane Irwin · 11/06/07 05:21PM

Colombian rock star Juanes sold more than 6 million songs during his new album's digital prerelease. The sales set a record, according to Universal Music, which distributed the songs via legitimate Internet and mobile vendors. People actually paid for music. Good for Juanes; better, hopefully, for the digital consumer. It's not that music execs are wholly clueless. For a hits-driven industry, sales speak much louder than anticopyright zealots' rhetoric. it's that they haven't had enough success stories like this one to persuade them to buy into the digital marketplace.