Getting Digital

I imagine just about everyone is aware by now that "Kristen", the Emperor's Club call girl who met Eliot Spitzer in DC, is actually Ashley Alexandra Dupre, an aspiring R&B singer with a few songs on her Myspace. Now the Daily Intelligencer at New York Magazine is reporting that she has sold over 2 million digital downloads of her 2 songs through online music vendor Amie Street. Each song sells for 98 cents, and she gets a 70% cut of the total profit. The "total profit" as considered by Amie Street is likely less than the total 98 cent cost of the song, so it's unclear how much Dupre is actually receiving per download, but let's assume that it's at least 25 cents. Multiply that by 2 million+, and she's made over $500,000 on digital downloads, the majority of which have come this week. As shown in the graphic above, her songs are topping Amie Street's weekly (and even monthly) sales chart. I'm not sure where NYMag got the figures for actual number of tracks sold, since they don't appear readily available at Amie Street, but it would be interesting to see how her numbers this week compare to the top selling songs in the iTunes and Amazon stores.