AC/DC Fans Continue Downloading 'Black Ice' Illegally Ahead Of Release

According to Big Champagne, an online measuring service which tracks P2P and file-sharing network traffic, AC/DC's "Black Ice" was the most downloaded album on the web this past week. An average 100,000 rock fans a day have been downloading the record this week in addition to the more than 400,000 fans which obtained the LP illegally last weekend.

AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson defended the band's controversial stance on keeping its music off iTunes, explaining, "Maybe I'm just being old fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless 'em, it's going to kill music if they're not careful. It's a monster, this thing. It just worries me."

Guitarist Angus Young told the New York Times that the band objects to iTunes' insistence that songs must be available individually and not just as part of an album. He said, "It's like an artist who does a painting. If he thinks it's a great piece of work, he protects it. It's the same thing: this is our work."

Regarding AC/DC's decision to sell "Black Ice" exclusively through Wal-Mart in America, Johnson said, "A lot of people were saying 'Ah man, you're going to the big Wal-Mart, you're selling out.' Wal-Mart were the only big store to stock all of our albums, every single one of them, and they've never deviated. And they sold AC/DC shirts and pajamas for kids, which we thought was really cool."

"Black Ice", AC/DC's first album in eight years, comes out on October 20. It will also be available through acdc.com, with independent record stores selling a vinyl version.

AC/DC has sold 26.4 million albums since 1991, when SoundScan first began tracking record sales, making the group second only to THE BEATLES.

Wal-Mart has reportedly guaranteed that it will sell 2.5 million copies of "Black Ice". The band's last effort, 2000's "Stiff Upper Lip", has sold 940,000.