AC/DC Sell Almost 700,000 Singles In First Week On iTunes

The AC/DC camp are probably kicking themselves a little bit that they didn’t jump onto the iTunes bandwagon sooner, but then again, considering that they have just sold almost 100,000 singles a day this week, I’m sure that they’re not too bothered.

After resisting the online distribution service for many years, AC/DC committed their back catalogue to iTunes for the first time this week. You’ll struggle to find fault in the decision as Billboard has crunched the numbers and they read something along the lines of 49,000 album sales, and 696,000 single sales on top of that.

Out of their entire collection, it was 14 tracks alone that accumulated the huge total. This includes, but is not limited to, Thunderstruck, which had 85,000 buys; Back in Black at 2nd place with 68,000; and You Shook Me All Night Long with a cool 64,000. As for the albums, Back in Black tops that list, pushing around 15,000 units.

AC/DC were one of the last iconic rock bands to resist the digital temptation. Before them The Beatles resisted, before giving in and smashing around 119,000 digital albums and 1.42 million single sales. Back in 2007, according to Ultimate Classic Rock, Led Zeppelin also jumped aboard that same year, pulling in around 47,000 for albums and 300,000 for singles that year.

I’d imagine those who are yet to convert to the legal digital download system will look at these figures and consider otherwise.

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