Vodafone says it is No. 1 seller of singles

Vodafone is claiming the No. 1 spot as New Zealand's biggest retailer of music singles.

The company's head of music, Morgan Donoghue, said Vodafone's sales of single tracks for December reached 106,000, or more than half of all single tracks sold in New Zealand for the month.

Vodafone and Telecom offer a service where tracks or albums can be downloaded both to the customer's phone and computer at $1.99 for a single track.

Compact disc retailers continue to dominate the album market, although sales have been declining for the last six years, as downloading has gained momentum.

Vodafone's album sales are in the hundreds per month, Donoghue said.

Telecom declined to discuss its music market share.

BusinessDay was unable to confirm the Vodafone figure. A spokesman from the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (Rianz), which collects sales data and represents music producers and artists, said the association would not discuss any aspect of the industry. It also refused to let Vodafone show the data to BusinessDay.

In May last year, Rianz began including downloaded digital music from legitimate music retailers in its sales figures, which provide data for the weekly top 40 charts.

One industry source said the recording industry is sensitive to falling CD sales and Rianz was probably reluctant to provide market share data.

According to the most recent figures available from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, New Zealand per capita recorded music expenditure has fallen from $51.80 in 2001 to $34.57 in 2006.

CD sales have been in decline since 2002, suffering their largest fall in 2006, down 10.1 per cent from the previous year.

In November last year Icon Digital, which owned 22 Sounds music stores, collapsed owing creditors almost $20 million.

Shaun Davis, managing director of Digital Media Distribution, said he expected the trend towards downloading, which lets customers choose individual tracks without being lumbered with unwanted tracks on a CD, to continue.