PT Soundscan tomorrow will begin tracking and reporting online music sales for recording distributor Amplified Entertainment, expanding efforts to bring its data services to the Web. While music downloads have so far sold poorly, Soundscan is taking steps to stake its claim on the Internet as a sales medium. For their part, online retailers hope that more complete sales-tracking data will help legitimize digital music distribution.
Some legal tracks are already available, but few are from top-selling contemporary artists.
That's about to change. EMI Recorded Music is scheduled to begin making tracks by its top artists available online July 18 as part of partnerships with Amplified, Liquid Audio and Supertracks. Tomorrow's deal will extend Soundscan's existing relationship with Amplified, which distributes digital content through a network of online retailer partners. Amplified's partners can access Soundscan's services to track sales of their physical music products online. Those services have expanded to include sales of digital products such as albums, singles and custom compilation CDs.