Gotye Leads US Mid-Year Chart With 5.5 Million Downloads

Gotye's world-beating single Somebody That I Used To Know, featuring Kimbra, is America's highest selling single of the first six months of 2012, according to the mid-year charts.

In that time the track has been downloaded 5.5 million times, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It beats fun.'s We Are Young with Janelle Monae (5 million) and Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe (4.1 million), which were second and third respectively. Six tracks sold over three million downloads in the first six months.

It is a familiar story for the albums' mid-year chart, with Adele's 21 again top with 3.6 million sales to date. She also topped the mid-year and end-year charts in 2011, with 2.5 and 5.8 million scans respectively. A distant second was Lionel Richie, whose Tuskegee manager 912,000 scans.

The figures also revealed that Sony Music Entertainment failed in their attempt to dethrone Universal Music Group for lead market share. The two have been neck-and-neck all year, with Sony believed to be catching the long-time leader. Sony had desperately wanted to pass Universal before their acquisition of EMI's recorded music division is given the all clear. If/when it is, Universal's lead will become insurmountable for the near future.

As it stands after the first six months of 2012, Neilsen's SoundScan has Universal at a 30.15 percent share, while Sony have a 29.93 percent share. Universal have eight of the top 20 albums, including Lionel Richie, while Sony had five of the top ten - including Adele's 21- but only six of the top 20.

Sony actually leads Universal on actual album share, but when track equivalent albums (the industry-accepted calculation that ten single tracks equal one album) are factored in Universal still holds the overall share.

Overall the Warner Music Group are third with 18.4 percent share and Universal-bound EMI Music are fourth with 10.1 percent share.