A digital music download (also known as a digital single or a paid digital
download) is an official and legal music single available for purchase through an online store.
Popular examples of online music stores that sell digital singles and albums include the iTunes Store
and Napster.
Digital downloads are often encoded with Digital Rights Management that restricts
making additional copies of the music or play purchased songs on a playing device
from a competing hardware manufacturer. For example, songs purchased from iTunes
will only play on an iPod.
Legal music downloads have existed since 2000. Paid digital download may suffer
from the development of techniques enabling the digital extraction of songs
played on the radio which, although offering lower quality sound, is also legal.
Legal music downloads were first compiled by Billboard in 2003, but they didn't gain mainstream
acceptance in the United States until around February 2005, when digital sales for singles
started to be included in the Billboard Hot 100 and other Billboard charts. In the year before,
the Hot 100 chart was similar to the Hot 100 Airplay chart, because only minor CD-single sales
affected the chart. The inclusion of digital singles has immensely helped many songs chart and
peak higher, including Jessica Simpson's cover of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" which
became her second-highest peaking Hot 100 single thanks to digital sales. Another example is
Britney Spears' "Do Somethin'" which wasn't released as a radio single, but charted in 2005
due to top-fifty (number forty-nine) digital sales.
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