JACK JOHNSON CURIOUS GEORGE MOST DOWNLOADED SO FAR

Jack Johnson’s soundtrack for Curious George is the most downloaded album, according to half-year 2006 numbers from Soundscan. Keywords: Daniel Powter, Alter…

Jack Johnson’s soundtrack for the Curious George movie was the most downloaded album of the year so far as measured by SoundScan. The collection has sold about 117,000 copies digitally. Albums by James Blunt, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dixie Chicks were also in the Top 5. Daniel Powter has the highest selling digital song, selling one-point-five million copies of his song “Bad Day.”

In an interview conducted earlier this year, Johnson said that he knows that he has good songs and a good album by running it past his kid.

“Yeah, he is. I test out even my last record and all that stuff. Kids go all off of feel. They don’t know anything about trends yet or anything like that so if something feels right…. It’s funny how it is, you can tell sometimes they’re too into their legos and you can’t try to be, ‘Here, listen to this song,’ but if they’re in the mood and want to do it sometimes you’ll play and then they’ll be like — not just him but other kids I play music for, other friends — and they’ll be ‘no no.’ They’re real honest. I’ll start playing a song and they’ll say, ‘No, no, no. Not that one.’ And then you come back to it later and see if it works and it was just a thing, and they tell you, ‘No, no. Not again.’ Your’re like, ‘Maybe that one’s not working. Maybe this has, kind of, not got the vibe.’ They’re real honest.”

Soundscan also reports that total music sales in all forms is up 27%, which could signal that the music industry is catching up with technology. Album sales were down almost five percent from last year, but digital album sales were up 127 percent.

Country was the biggest genre gainer, while Alternative, R&B and Hip-Hop all showed sales decreases from 2005 numbers. Alternative and R and B are still the most popular music genres as measured by the number of albums sold.