Download Singles

After a couple of instances of big American acts releasing highly anticipated singles as download only over the past couple of months (Rihanna, Christina Aguilera), I've come up with a theory I thought I'd run by you.

In America in the late 90's the record companies wanted to be allowed to have airplay only singles to chart in the main Hot 100 so as to allow them to sell more albums. To 'encourage' Billboard to allow this they stopped releasing highly successful songs as singles, meaning that under the old chart rules they would never appear on the main chart, only the airplay chart. I know this happened with No Doubt's 'Don't Speak' and Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn' which was no.1 on the airplay chart for something like 11wks!

My theory is they are trying to do exactly the sam thing in Britain, except this time with legal downloads. If legal downloads were allowed into the chart with no physical copy available, many companies would probably swiftly attempt to kill the physical single to make more money. I think they are releasing download only singles of big artists waaaay earlier than is sensible to prove their point that a download only singles chart is viable to the OCC. What do you think?

(p.s. sorry if this has already been brought up! :) )