TV music channel TMF (The Music Factory, owned by MTV) recently announced plans to include all downloads in the computation of its new hit parade called Superchart, both from legal and illegal sources. This week the station cancelled those plans, according to NRC (Dutch). Counting paid downloads in hit parades is a relatively new phenomenon. Two years ago, in April 2006, Gnarls Barkeley were the first act to top a major (UK) hit parade on the strength of downloads.

NRC lists no reason why TMF would change the format of their chart at the last minute, other than that the station considers downloading from an illegal source to be “wrong”. NVPI, Dutch representatives of the record industry, applaud TMF’s decision. “You are sending a fatal message if you count all downloads for your hit parades,” Wouter Rutten said. “It would be as if the music industry had accepted downloads from an illegal source.” Oh my.

(Why the unwieldy “downloads from an illegal source”? Because the Netherlands, like Canada and a few other countries, allow copies for private use. The phrase “illegal downloads”, recently gaining popularity in the Netherlands, may be snappier but is also incorrect.)

Via Dagelinks (Dutch).