Did you know The Gorillaz were the first artist to chart in the UK Top 40 with a majority of units sold coming from digital sales?

I was reading through Rise of The Ogre (would highly recommend for any Gorillaz fan by the way. You can find it on Archive.org https://archive.org/details/rise-of-the-ogre) and in the section for Feel Good Inc., they mentioned they were the first band to have ever charted off of downloads alone.

Now, the book is a fictional retelling of real events, and sometimes it's hard to differentiate fact from fiction so I did some snooping. Nothing on their Wikipedia page or Fan Wiki mentioned it anywhere, but I found an old article from 2005 that basically confirms it. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/apr/18/netmusic.music)

Now it doesn't say it outright that they were, however, that article does mention that it was the first week UK charts were counting digital sales, and it also mentioned that without the digital sales, they would've charted at 197, not 22. Those two facts together kind of prove what they said. The book did say there was some controversy with their charting, but I couldn't find much info. I would believe it though since digital sales, and now streams, have shaken up the charts over the past two decades.

I just thought it was a pretty interesting fact that I don't think a lot of Gorillaz fans were aware of, and wanted to share.