What do increased sales of Dark Side of The Moon tell us?

That there's a new audio format to buy it in. Pink Floyd's 1973 album has become the unofficial metric by which one measures a new audio format's likely takeup, as there's an apparently insatiable supply of people ready to buy and re-buy it whenever it is re-issued.

The latest version is the iTunes Plus version on Apple's iTunes Store, encoded in AAC at 256Kbps without DRM restrictions. Previously, the album has also been released on stereo vinyl, quadraphonic vinyl, 8-track, CD (several times, with different mixes and packaging), Super Audio CD, Windows Media Audio, and standard iTunes (128KBps AAC with copying restrictions).

According to the band's site (tinyurl.com/d4ua7), the album "has sold approximately 34m copies worldwide". Though to say that is to skim over the fact that it remained in the US top 100 for 1,558 weeks - just two weeks short of three decades.

All of which led Bill Bumgarner, a developer for Apple, to remark that "Dark Side of the Moon is the porn of audio media". Why? Because "if porn embraces a video format, it'll be a success. Likewise, if DSotM dominates your audio media sales, [it's a] definite success indicator..."(tinyurl.com/2y7fgy). All together: breathe...



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