Archive for the ‘Music Business News’ Category
I was out of town last weekend camping, so I missed most of Record Store Day. But I did manage to get home for the Liam Hayes performance at Reckless Records here in Chicago which was great. Unfortunately, though, I missed out on most of the sweet RSD exclusives. I was able to pick up the Heart Of Gold/Sugar Mountain 7″, but missed out on the John Fahey LP reissue (only 500 copies pressed! c’mon guys!) But it seemed like there are more and more people combing through the racks of LPs, even on non-RSD weekends.
On Twitter yesterday, there were a bunch of folks pointing to numbers that emerged regarding sales per format and how well this RSD did.
From Billboard:
According to Street Pulse, comparing Record Store Day 2010 to RSD 2009 showed an increase of overall sales by 135.4%.
Here was their breakdown:
All Music + 135.4%
Vinyl + 376.7%
CD + 40.4%
Video – 38.6%
Merch + 28.5%Also, and this is an interesting fact, according to Nielsen Soundscan, Record Store Day 2010 was the biggest day of sales for vinyl in Soundscan’s history. This is definitely good news for vinyl record, and turntable, manufacturers.
Couldn’t be happier about the bolded text. Maybe with more buyers, new LP costs will start coming down a bit. And maybe GLM might even jump into that marketplace.
So congrats to everyone who was involved for delivering on what should be, in my view, a major national holiday… or simply an everyday holiday.
A good read at BerkleeMusic.com. The Music Business Handbook is a downloadable PDF you can get by giving them your email — which I believe is part of the second chapter, Direct To Fan. It’s a good overview of what kind of marketplace up-and-coming artists find themselves.
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Some new music hit the web this month that I’ve been listening to — as I take a short break from my Alphabetical Listening Project. Definitely worth your time.
Brad Mehldau’s Highway Rider through Nonesuch. One of my favorite producers, Jon Brion, who did Largo, did a bang up job throughout.
Dave Holland’s newest, Pathways, for Octet sounds great. I’ll be picking that one up shortly. Check it out here.
Last, some reissued, remastered boxed sets from Black Saint / Soul Note are available now. I’m specifically excited about picking up the Charlie Haden box, but the others are on my To-Buy list as well. All are available here.
Anything I’ve missed? Pass on what’s found it’s way to your ears in the comments if you’d like.
A prime piece of studio real estate is for sale. EMI — who apparently is in need of some extra cash — put the famed Abbey Road Studios up on the market.
From Pitchfork…
…according to the Financial Times, the studios are becoming prohibitively expensive to use, and EMI is in desperate need of cash. It’s not clear yet whether EMI is selling the Abbey Road brand name along with the studio itself. The Financial Times quotes a media lawyer as saying, “the brand is worth more that the building.” So if you’re planning to buy Abbey Road, you might have to rename it Rabbey Oad or something.
In a classic case of irony sent on by Greenleaf commenter Mike Grimaldi, “Scorpio” talks about the golden days of smash hit bootlegs and how the Internet has ruined his business.
From NY Mag:
The music industry took another tumble in 2009, with CD sales down 12.7 percent from 2008. But the shadier, shadowy side of the business has been equally decimated. At one time, as many as 75 unofficial bootleg “companies” existed, illegally cranking out LPs and then CDs of hard-to-find studio and soundboard-jacked live recordings by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Phish, Pearl Jam, and other rock icons. Some, like the multidisc Dylan Ten of Swords box, are considered classics. Although it’s impossible to gauge exactly how profitable this quasi-industry was, the four-decade-old bootlegging biz generated millions of dollars globally. But now, this old-school method of illegal music distribution — one of rock’s most illustrious if illicit traditions — is being destroyed right along with the legit CD, all by the new-school method: the Internet.
I remember back in the day paying $40 for a “rare” Pink Floyd bootleg set. Hard to imagine doing that for burned CD-Rs now.
Before we head out for the weekend, CONGRATULATIONS to Kneebody for their Classical Crossover Grammy Nom for 12 Songs By Charles Ives (W&W | Amazon), a collaboration with Theo Bleckmann. Killer record. And to celebrate, their debut is our Record of the Day until Monday morning. Hop on that deal while it’s active.
Happy weekend.
TimesOnline: “This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.
“It shows the fate of the three main pillars of music industry revenue – recorded music, live music, and PRS revenues (royalties collected on behalf of artists when their music is played in public) over the last 5 years.
“…two things clear: one, that the growth in live revenue shows no signs of slowing and two, that live is by far and away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money from ticket sales.”
As Billboard noted here, I’d also like to see a chart like this that excludes the top dogs.
“In 1982, the top 1% of artists took in 26% of concert revenue; in 2003 that figure was 56%. … The top 5% of revenue generators took in 62% of concert revenue in 1982 and 84% in 2003. Surely, this is a market where superstars receive the lion’s share of the income.”
I just got wind of Wolfgangs Vault opening the flood gates of archived material dating back to the second Newport Festival via Ben Ratliff’s article at the Times.
“…posting free streams of a handful of performances from the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival, at wolfgangsvault.com: the first offerings include Count Basie, Dakota Staton and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. By next Tuesday, when more are added, there will be 27 sets from that year’s jazz festival, including some by Ahmad Jamal, Joe Williams, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver. The plan is to have hundreds more online in the coming months, from other years of Newport Jazz and from the Newport Folk Festival as well.”
A couple clicks later, I’m listening. And noticing that I can embed some of this tunage into this post. What nice guys over there, understanding word of mouth and all.
Looking forward to hearing more.
Happy weekend.
From the NY Times: A Few Dollars at a Time, Patrons Support Artists on the Web. Kickstarter is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers…
DIY goes mainstream.
A few rock-related links to pass on in case you’re interested…
New Radiohead Tune Leaked – “These Are My Twisted Words?“
Jonny from Dead Air Space: So here’s a new song, called ‘These Are My Twisted Words’.
We’ve been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished. We’re pretty proud of it.
There’s other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we’ve been practicing, and which we’ll probably play at this summer’s concerts. Hope you like it.
It seems they actually leaked it. Perhaps a piece of the “great idea” Thom mentioned in a recent interview. Never a dull moment with those guys.
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New Jim O’Rourke Album – “The Visitor”
Stream a preview of a track at the new Drag City website. More details to follow, I’m sure.
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From boingboing.com – New Jersey police detained 68-year old American music star Bob Dylan recently, after a young officer failed to recognize him. A disheveled Dylan was wearing a hoodie, wandering around in the rain looking at a house for sale. The 24-year-old female officer was responding to a phone call from the occupants of a home that had a “For Sale” sign on it. The residents were called in with a report of an “eccentric-looking old man” in their yard .
