RIAA hands out awards for most popular downloads

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 28 Oct 2004 at 15:22

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) - better known these days for pursuing digital music swappers - honoured sales of digital music last night with an awards ceremony.

The digital market is only a tiny percentage of the massive revenues generated from the sales of CDs. But the burgeoning market in paid-for downloads, led by Apple's iTunes, is fast gaining momentum and is seen as a lifeline to a music industry that feels it's under threat from the file swappers.

The top award went to OutKast, who sold 400,000 downloads of 'Hey Ya!', meriting a multi-platinum gong. Other platinum winners included D12, Maroon 5 and Hoobastank. The list of gold winners is a more familiar roll call with Beyonce, Black-Eyed Peas and Usher taking honours.

However, the RIAA struggled to come up with a concrete design to represent an essentially intangible product. It eventually plumped for a design overlayed upon the sleeve art of the award-winning track.

Perhaps someone might come up with a suggestion...