"Konvicted," the new CD from Akon, promised to be one of the year's big sellers when it appeared in record stores last month. Buoyed by two of the hottest singles in the country, Akon, a silky-voiced R&B singer, also had the most-viewed page among major-label acts on MySpace.com.Sure enough, the album opened big, but in a way that reflects the transitional state of the record business. "Konvicted" sold more than 283,000 copies in its first week, enough to reach at No.2 on the Billboard chart. On top of that, the album's two singles sold more than 244,000 copies combined that week at digital music services like iTunes. And a week later, snippets of the same songs captured two of the top three spots on a new chart tracking sales of ringtones, combining to sell 269,000.As a recording that has sold modestly, but in an array of forms, Akon's music illustrates the new definition of a hit in pop music: Instead of racking up sales of a half-million CDs or more in the first week, it arrives with solid sales from multiple sources. And it serves as an example of the business model the retrenching music industry is embracing as sales of the CD, its mainstay product for two decades, slowly decay.
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