Digital music had a big year in Latin America in 2007 if Billboard is to be believed. There’s no “overall digital music increased this much” figure, but there are some more specific numbers given which are promising. The mobile relevant ones:
—Juanes sold 6 million digital tracks in the week prior to the release of his album, including master ringtones and 500,000 digital albums preloaded into mobile phones in Latin America.
—Univision, the dominant label group in regional Mexican, made its catalog available as mastertones. One result: Alacranes Musical top-selling mastertone has shifted 39,000 units, its top-selling polyphonic has shifted 6,000.
—Labels increasingly signed deals with carriers and handset manufacturers to preload music and music-related content onto mobile phones, which is now the practice for established acts such as Ricky Martin. There’s obviously several ways this could have been done, but it’s probably another example of content as a commodity being used to sell services and gadgets.