CD single sales are THAT low?

As a followup to this earlier post, I thought I'd share something I learned from the February 5th issue of Billboard. The Singles Minded column has two facts that highlight the pathetic state of CD single sales and the growth of paid downloads of song.

First, it was revealed that there was an error with tracking the Erasure single Breathe, and with sales of 1,000, it should have been #2 on the Singles Sales chart. (In comparison, the last Erasure hit, Always, did well on airplay but only reached #20 on the Hot 100 because its single sales were low.)

In a following story about songs that had reentered the downloads chart, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne (recently played in a Dr Pepper commercial) came in at #49 on the Top Downloads chart with sales of 5,500.

5,500 is #49. 1,000 is #2. Sad.

Stacy's Mom was another song that I didn't buy because there was no CD single available, and I was able to acquire it on one of the NOW CDs.