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iTUNES Gets Ready For 10 Billion Sold And Reveals The Top-10 Most Downloaded
February 19, 2010
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"Apple is leading the digital music revolution, but at its core, it's all about the music."
-- Apple's Steve JobsThe iTunes critics be damned. Apple's iTunes store is getting ready for the sale of its 10 billionth song.
To celebrate that milestone, Apple has launched a contest that will award the person who downloads the 10-billionth song a $10,000 gift card redeemable at the iTunes Store. (Apple marked the download of the five billionth track in June 2008, which means that the next five billion were sold in just two more years, indicating rapid growth for the iTunes store)
At the same time, Apple has revealed its Top 10 most downloaded songs of all time. (http://tinyurl.com/ykpqsps )
Not surprisingly in my opinion, mainstream pop titles rule in the ranking: 1. Black Eyed Peas, "I Gotta Feeling"; 2. Lady GaGa, "Poker Face"; 3. Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"; 4. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"; 5. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida"; 6. Lady Gaga & Colby O'Donis, "Just Dance"; 7. Flo Rida, "Low feat. T-Pain"; 8. Taylor Swift, "Love Story"; 9. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"; and 10. Ke$ha, "Tik Tok"
10 billion songs sold means a whole lot of artists are receiving checks from iTunes because 10 billion less songs were downloaded illegally.
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 2
THE RIAA TALLIES THE DECADES TOP GOLD AND PLATINUM WINNERS ... AND WHAT ELSE? OH, YEAH, THOSE LAWSUITS
Congrats to The Eagles, who are the #1 most-awarded Gold and Platinum group of the past decade with a total of 48 total certifications; Michael Jackson, who was the #1 Male Artist with a total of 44 certifications; and Beyonce, who was the #1 Female Artist with a total of 64 certifications. (Source: http://tinyurl.com/y9f5m3e )
From the RIAA's Chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol about the RIAA's Gold and Platinum program: "As a community, we've endured our share of challenges, but the new decade brings reasons for hope and optimism. The appetite for music is stronger than ever and the breadth of innovation is amazing. In this ever-evolving landscape, we're grateful that the RIAA's Gold and Platinum program continues to be the music industry's recognized brand for success."
Keeping in mind these 'Tracks' I write about each week are, as it says at the top of the page, "One Man's Opinion," I have to ask Mitch: a) "As a community we've endured our challenges" - "We" is a collective pronoun, and I don't think "we" is applicable here, unless the RIAA wants to cuts its staffs as dramatically as the labels that fund it have, and wants to reduce its overhead accordingly. (You know, those BIG salaries and expense accounts for wining and dining the politicians in D.C., and for all the other goodies); b) Yes, the "breadth of innovation is amazing." But not at the RIAA. Where's the innovation inside the RIAA? What has the association done in any way innovative to contribute to the industry it (allegedly) supports?
The Gold and Platinum certifications are the industry's well-recognized brand, there's little doubt about that. But those Gold and Platinum awards are earned by artists and labels who have worked hard at earning them, and issuing the awards at certain sales levels just isn't enough for the industry's association. Neither are the lawsuits that continue to waste lots of money in attorney fees and have yet to accomplish anything.
I still wait for Mr. Bainwol and the RIAA to take some type of pro-active leadership role on the industry's behalf and seek ways to create new revenue streams/models for a more secure future.
Innovation means participating in the growth of ideas to introduce something new and make changes in anything already established. I for one, see no evidence of that coming out of the RIAA.
If I'm wrong, I ask any reader at any label to e-mail with the reasons why with their opposing viewpoint.
I also recommend Jerry Del Colliano's post this week 'The RIAA Proves Music Is Worth Less' at his INSIDE MUSIC MEDIA here: http://tinyurl.com/yhxazbc
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 3
NIELSEN REPORT SAYS THE PAID CONTENT MODEL FOR NEWS WON'T PROVE WORTHWHILE
I've written several articles about why I believe the paid content model for news and blogs won't work. Now, yet another report echoes the same things I've already mentioned in those articles.
While most consumers prefer their online content free, many are willing to open their wallets and purses for particular offerings, according to new research from Nielsen. What sorts of content are consumers willing to pay for online? Mostly movies, music and games, according to a survey of some 27,000 consumers across 52 countries. Meanwhile, content created online -- like blogs, podcasts and video -- are the least likely to attract consumer dollars, Nielsen finds. "Much of their content has basically become a commodity, readily available elsewhere for free," notes Nielsen. As a result, nearly eight out of every 10 respondents -- 79% -- said they would no longer use a website that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost."
You can read the article 'Consumers Will Spend Money Online On Certain Content, But News Has Become A Commodity' here: http://tinyurl.com/ydoovkk
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 4
MTV IS "FOREVER YOUNG"
"I think it's always been the forever-young brand, always about the rhythm of being young. Sometimes that means music at the forefront, sometimes that means something pro-social, like the current campaign about digital abuse and coming forward, sometimes it means the cast of "Jersey Shore." It has never been a brand or something that has grown with whatever audience was there in the past. We're always about a window and a mirror and looking forward. It's pioneering, stimulating, sometimes controversial, always talked about -- it's about young-adult culture, always has been and always will be " -- MTV CEO Judy McGrath in Advertising Age
Well she said it: "sometimes it means the cast of 'Jersey Shore'." (And what about that show is "pioneering" or "stimulating'?)
Like I said last week, MTV is now just "teenage wasteland."
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 5
AFTER $70 MILLION ...VEOH FILES BANKRUPTCY
If you haven't read about it elsewhere, this week Veoh.com (Veoh Networks) filed bankruptcy and will soon shut down.
I was going to write about all the reasons why I think Veoh didn't have a chance in the end (most obvious to me: YouTube was the online monster with same came or similar content), but I found a post on StreamingMedia.com titled 'Veoh Should Be A Reminder That Execution & Focus Are More Important Than Vision,' that says it all in my opinion. ( http://tinyurl.com/ykta39h )
From the post: "While it's never good to see any company go under, one can't at all be surprised to see Veoh Networks finally go out of business after burning through more than $70M in funding. While they were not the first and definitely won't be the last company that will have to shut their doors this year, Veoh should act as another example to the industry that focus and execution are more important than vision ... The problem was that Veoh simply lacked focus. It's hard to do anything well and focus on it when you're trying to be everything to everybody. Veoh was a video platform, a content syndicator, a TV guide of content, a recommendation engine, an ad delivery platform and a software company that was pushing users to download Veoh's own proprietary video player. That's simply trying to do too much. If Veoh's content was niche, maybe they could have pulled it off with the right focus, but when your business model is based purely on advertising, you can't keep your content niche since you need as much traffic as possible."
And Now For Some News ...
I Read The News Today, Oh Boy ... EMI Puts Abbey Road Up For Sale
The Wall Street JournalThe famed EMI Abbey Road studios -- where The Beatles recorded, where Pink Floyd recorded their masterpiece, Dark Side Of The Moon and where such classic movie soundtracks as The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of The Lost Ark and the Lord of the Rings trilogy have been recorded -- are now up for sale. Or at least that's what's in the wind anyway.
This is just further proof of the real troubles brewing at EMI since they were bought in a leveraged buyout by Terra Firma. If anyone needs more proof the only companies that should be buying music companies, are those companies that know the music business, this sad story is prima facie evidence.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Go Looking For Online Music With Radio Tuna
Cnet.comIn the simplest terms, the service is a search engine that is designed specifically to scour Internet radio stations based on a variety of parameters. You have three search options: station name, genre or artist. The most compelling of the three is the artist search, which lets you narrow in on a radio station that is playing your desired artist at the moment you enter the term. It also populates a list of stations that have played the artist in the past.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Vinyl Record Sales Are Surging...It's Not A Fad, It's A Real Growth Market
Dallas NewsDisco? Dead. Mood rings? Obsolete. Vinyl records? Retro-cool and spinning back to life. Vinyl sales nationwide topped 2.5 million in 2009, a 33% increase from 2008's 1.9 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. At Half Price Books, vinyl sales for the past year were up about 3% in Texas.
"Vinyl is kind of going crazy, and we thought it was going to be the dinosaur," says Kirk Thompson, public relations manager at Half Price Books in Dallas. "And actually, it's CDs that are kind of going by the wayside."
Read more about it by clicking here.
The Dept. Of Justice Forms Intellectual Property Task Force
RTT NewsAttorney General Eric Holder announced the formation of a new Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property Friday. The Task Force is designed to focus on strengthening efforts to combat intellectual property crimes through close coordination with state and local law enforcement partners as well as international counterparts.
In addition, it will monitor and coordinate overall intellectual property enforcement efforts at the department, with an increased focus on the international aspects of IP enforcement, including the links between IP crime and international organized crime.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Google's Schmidt Says We're All Going Mobile
eweekAlbeit in an address to the "Mobile World Congress," Google CEO Eric Schmidt just called for the broader industry to make mobile priority No. 1. Within three years, sales of smartphones will surpass sales of PCs, according to research cited by Schmidt. "The confluence of these three factors (computing, connectivity and the cloud) means your phone is your alter ego, an extension of everything we do," he told conference attendees.
"Here, right now, we understand the new rule is 'mobile first' in everything ... Perhaps the phrase should be 'mobile first' simply because it's time to be proud of what we have built together." Google, it should also be noted, is presently endeavoring to establish Android as a preferred mobile operating system among consumers and developers.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Nielsen Says The Online Video Audience Was Up 5% In 2009
The online video audience grew 5.2% last year from 137.4 million unique U.S. viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million last month, according to new Nielsen data. That marks a slowdown from the 16% growth between 2008 and 2009. YouTube remained by far the dominant video property, with an audience of 112.6 million, up 6.7% in the last month.
Read more about it by clicking here.
THIS IS IT #1:
Michael Jackson's tour rehearsal documentary "This Is It," sold 1.2 million copies in its first week, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Twenty-one percent of the title's sales came from Blu-ray discs.
ENGLAND GAGA OVER THE LADY:
Lady Gaga was the big winner's at the Brit Awards in the U.K. this past week, the BBC reports, picking up three honors -- the International trophies for Female, Breakthrough and Album and performing a tribute to designer Alexander McQueen.
RAITT GETS BLUES HONORS, AND SONGWRITERS HONOR COHEN AND EW&F:
Bonnie Raitt will be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and Leonard Cohen and Earth, Wind and Fire will join the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. The Blues ceremony goes down May 5th in Memphis, the AP reports, and the Songwriters event is June 17th in New York.
MORE DOORS:
"When You're Strange: A Film About the Doors," a new Tom DiCillo-directed documentary that features previously unseen archival footage of the band and is narrated by Johnny Depp, will get a limited release in theaters April 9th with the soundtrack album coming March 30th on Rhino.
THE NEED FOR SPEED:
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said this week that his agency's goal is to bring super-high-speed broadband connections running at 100 megabytes per second into 100 million U.S. homes.
DRE SUES:
Dr. Dre is suing the resurrected Death Row Records for re-releasing "The Chronic" without permission and failing to pay him royalties, the AP reports. "When it came to paying artist royalties and honoring limits on Dr. Dre recordings that could be released, the 'new' Death Row Records, to quote our client, 'forgot about Dre,' " his attorney said in a hilarious statement.
BEYONCE THE DECADE HOLDER:
Billboard reports that Beyoncé has been named the RIAA's biggest earner of gold and platinum certifications for albums, videos, digital singles and ringtones with 64 for the past decade, Eagles follow with 48 and Michael Jackson had 44.
DEADHEADS WILL CELEBRATE:
The Grateful Dead's July 7th, 1989 show at Philadelphia's John F. Kennedy Stadium is being turned into a three-disc, one-DVD set called "Crimson, White & Indigo," due April 20th. The set features 19 songs including two Bob Dylan covers and a booklet of rare photos.
FACEBOOK NOW #2 ONLINE:
Facebook has replaced Yahoo as the second-largest U.S. Web property and is closing in on No. 1 Google, according to the latest data from Web analytics firm Compete. The social network in January drew an audience of nearly 134 million unique visitors, surging past Yahoo's 132 million. Google remained the top site, with a monthly audience of 148 million.
PASSING:
This past Sunday, Doug Fieger, the leader of The Knack, which went straight to the top of the charts in 1979 with his song "My Sharona," died Sunday in Woodland Hills. He was 57. Doug was diagnosed with brain cancer six years ago, and underwent multiple surgeries to battle it. Sharona Alperin, Doug's muse for "My Sharona," paid tribute to him, explaining: "Doug changed my life forever. He left on Valentine's Day, a day of heart and love, and that was Doug, all heart and love."
PASSING:
Dale Hawkins, 73, a Louisiana rockabilly singer and record producer whose 1957 hit "Susie Q" became a rock-and-roll standard and was a hit for Credence Clearwater Revival in the late 1960s, died of colon cancer Feb. 13th at a hospital near his home in Little Rock.
Quotes of the week
"It is an electro-opera, so the show is a musical, it's not just a pop show. It has lines and a score. There's a lot of music you haven't heard before, some of it's very old, some of it's new, that was scored specifically for the show itself."
-- Lady Gaga talking about her re-engineered "Monster Ball" show, noting also the show will feature "really innovative fashion.""That girl, for me, is a drug. And drugs aren't good for you if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me ... Sexually it was crazy. That's all I'll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm."
-- John Mayer, explaining his attraction to former girlfriend Jessica Simpson. And now we all know John is the kind that kisses and tells."I will never do nudity. I don't care how dark and intellectual the role could be, you know. I don't care if I frickin' could get an Oscar for it, I'm not going to do it. Those accolades mean nothing to me. I don't think people deserve to see what's under my clothing. That's only for my next husband ... ha-ha-ha."
-- Jessica Simpson in ALLURE magazine. (You don't ever have to worry about getting an Oscar, Jessica)"I had this black pleather jacket that someone didn't think was shiny enough, so I think they Turtle Waxed it and just buffed it out. But I thought I was bangin', baby! I couldn't move, but I was like, 'Look at me!'"
-- Rascal Flatts lead singer Gary LeVox, admitting to a fashion faux pas from the band's early days"I learned at our last reunion [in 1982] that you can't just get up there. You have to rehearse. I'm trying to find a way to do it. It's not easy. If I can work it out, I'll go."
-- Peter Gabriel, commenting on whether he will join his ex-bandmates in Genesis when they are inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, noting that he is also in the midst of rehearsing for his own European tour.
THE RADIO INTERVIEW on 'THE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE' - From newsblaze.com
"Steve Meyer is on the front line of global music sales and distribution which he expects will soar to pocket-bursting levels. What's more, he shares his insight and ingenuity with us. Steve gives us both historical perspective and futuristic vision as he chats with Judy about the love of his work, trends of the business and his personal points of view about success, happiness and blending life with the lust for life. Steve joins Judy and helps us discover the thrill of having it all with a sense of balance and purpose. "
You can listen to an interview I did with Judy Piazza of 'The American Perspective' by clicking here: (It runs about 15 minutes)
http://www.thesop.org/index.php?id=10306.
The Blogs
Check out Jerry Del Colliano's (the founder of INSIDE RADIO) daily blog, by clicking here: http://www.insidemusicmedia.blogspot.comWebsite
Check out attorney Ray Beckerman's website at: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com where he prints news about the RIAA's ongoing activities
TinyURL
Check out www.tinyurl.com where you can make a smaller URL that will work for any webpage you wish to link to or reference. (As you can see, I'm using it in my news stories above!)
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