I was actually a bit surprised how it came out. I would have never guessed the top two were actually the top two. And “Mom Went Bungie Jumping” appears to be the leader by a mile. Take a look for yourself:

Mom Went Bungie Jumping: 169
Voices: 83
I Will Sing: 57
Sequoyah: 43
The Birches of Moscow: 39
My Brontosaurus Threw a Potluck: 35
Deep Blue Grey: 30
The Peace: 27
The Road Goes On: 26
Your Warm: 25
Sun is Gonna Show: 24
Song from the Spring: 19
These Rooms: 13

(numbers indicate the total times a song has been downloaded/streamed)

If you want to hear a clip, click here to go to playlist at iTunes with these songs in this same rank of popularity.

Of course, these numbers don’t reflect “free” downloads or streams from other websites, such as this one, or from places like MySpace. The truth is, my most popular download of all-time is “Prairie Chapel Road,” which has now been given away more than 3,000 times. And “The Natural Thing” has more than 1,000 streams on MySpace.

But I was curious to see what folks were buying, and so there you have it. Interesting…fascinating really…to see where folks are putting their money.

BTW, you might assume all this downloading has brought in serious cash for me, yes? You’d be wrong. Total amount I’ve been paid for all these digital downloads?

About $55 bucks.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating here….where you choose to buy your online music makes a huge difference to actual artists. And the major company that –far and away– leads the other digital media companies, in terms of being “artist friendly?”

iTunes.

Yep. That’s right.

Sure, I’m predisposed to like them. And yes, I’m totally biased in my view of their company. But facts is facts. iTunes is the most “artist friendly” major digital distributor. It’s not even close. They pay artists more than ten times per song than some of the other major retailers.

In fact, of the sales listed above, Apple’s iTunes accounts for a mere one-quarter of all the downloads, but a whopping three-quarters of the money paid out!

Which allows me to remind you, as the flight attendants say, “We know you have a choice when you buy online, so thank you for choosing iTunes.”

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