Australia's New Singles Chart combines offline and online sales

For the ARIA Singles chart, where you can seel the full 50:

http://www.ariacharts.com.au/pages/charts_display.asp?chart=1U50

I WISH I WAS A PUNK ROCKER (WITH FLOWERS IN MY HAIR) Sandi Thom

SBME
SEXYBACK Justin Timberlake

JVE/SBME
I DON'T FEEL LIKE DANCIN' Scissor Sisters PDR/UMA
MANEATER Nelly Furtado GEF/UMA
LONDON BRIDGE Fergie A&M/UMA
U + UR HAND P!nk LAF/SBME
CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE SOBER Evanescence EPI/SBME
TALLER, STRONGER, BETTER Guy Sebastian SBME
BUTTONS The Pussycat Dolls Feat. Snoop Dogg A&M/UMA
WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG The Killers IUS/UMA



Story from The Australian / The Nation:

Pop charts get in tune with online sales

Iain Shedden, Music writer
October 09, 2006

PUNK rock ushered in the future of Australian music yesterday when the first ARIA singles chart combining online and conventional sales was released.

Scottish singer Sandi Thom's I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair), which has been No1 on the established ARIA singles chart for the past six weeks, came out on top of the new chart, which also recognises sales of songs bought online at websites such as iTunes and BigPond Music.

The combined chart signals a trend away from CD sales in shops towards the purchase, storage and playing of music through digital technology. Sales in the digital market have increased 30per cent since ARIA introduced a Digital Track chart in April and digital sales account for about 5.5 per cent of the overall music market in Australia.

That was an increase of four percentage points on the whole of last year.

ARIA chart and marketing committee chairman John Parker said combining both sets of retail figures was healthy for the local industry.

"The charts are a promotion tool for music," he said. "With the explosion of MP3 players, I think that digital sales will continue to grow at a rapid rate."

Twice as many digital tracks a week are bought in Australia than CD singles, although at the top end of the charts the No1 physical single outsells the top digital track by three to one.

The top of the new chart bears a striking resemblance to lastweek's conventional chart, with Thom, Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado and Fergie in the top five.

Further down the ladder, however, the combined chart benefited one Australian band, Perth's Eskimo Joe.

Their song Black Fingernails, Red Wine dropped out of the conventional chart last week, but re-entered the combined chart atNo23.

New Zealand trio Evermore also re-entered the singles chart with their song Running.