Tag Archives: music biz

Quote Of The Day – Bono

“Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it …

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Billboard’s 2009 Year-End Charts

Billboard Magazine has published its year-end charts for 2009. A sampling of this year’s most popular music…. Top Singles-1 BOOM BOOM POW The Black Eyed Peas 2 POKER FACE Lady Gaga 3 JUST DANCE Lady Gaga4 I GOTTA FEELING The Black Eyed Peas 5 LOVE STORY Taylor Swift 6 RIGHT ROUND Flo Rida 7 I’M YOURS Jason Mraz 8 SINGLE …

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ABBA Makes Rock-N-Roll Hall Of Fame

ABBA made the list of 2010 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame. Joining them will be Genesis, The Stooges, The Hollies, and Jimmy Cliff. And once again: NO DONNA SUMMER. Outrage! Eligibility begins 25 years after an artist’s first release, making Donna now ten years overdue. So much for those 12 Grammy nominations and five wins, including …

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iTunes’ Top Downloads For 2009

I’m usually more interested in Billboard’s year-end charts, which include physical and download sales, but here’s what sold best on iTunes. I recognize half of the most popular singles, which is pretty good for me these days. Top-Selling Songs: “Boom Boom Pow,” Black Eyed Peas“Right Round,” Flo Rida“Poker Face,” Lady GaGa“I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas“Gives You Hell,” The All-American …

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Apple Buys Lala, Streaming iTunes Next?

Apple has agreed to purchase the streaming music venture Lala, bringing speculation that iTunes may add its own streaming function. LaLa fills a big hole in Apple’s digital music strategy and could bring streaming down music from the cloud into iTunes-ready devices everywhere. Integrating Lala’s ad-free music service — which stores music collections online and sells streaming songs at a …

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Daily Grumble

On Saturday I met somebody who had never heard of the cassingle. That’s all I got.

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Rihanna’s Dollar Store

A music industry friend of JMG tips us that Rihanna is selling her complete new album, Rated R, on Amazon for only $3.99. He points out that if you apply Amazon’s $3.00 off coupon promotion, which runs until November 30th, you get the full album for 99 cents. Something tells me that a certain music industry friend of JMG is …

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Today In Music Marketing

Weezer is selling its own branded Snuggie. Oh, and it comes with their new album, Raditude. A sign of the continuing decline of music retail? Or brilliant marketing?

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Death Sells

Michael Jackson sold more albums in the last two weeks than in the last two years. Almost 90% of the sales have been physical albums, as fans want a tangible keepsake. Retailers think sales may actually increase as they replace the depleted stock and widen their offerings of his back catalog. Jackson’s Number Ones is the top selling U.S. album …

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How Auto-Tune Works

I caught an cute segment about Auto-Tune on PBS’ Nova, in which music engineers point to Cher’s 1998 hit Believe as the first dramatically pitch-altered hit single. It seems like every other song on the radio right now uses the Believe gimmick, doesn’t it?

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Did Michael Jackson Die Of Anorexia?

When a 50 year-old man only weighs 112 pounds at 5’11”, it seems possible. placeAd2(commercialNode,’midarticleflex’,false,”) According to autopsy reports, the King of Pop was a skeletal 112 pounds when he died last Thursday. Although the cause of death won’t be known for weeks, two authors of Michael Jackson biographies have put forward an intriguing theory: that Jackson might have died …

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Jackson’s Kids Go To His Mother

Michael Jackson’s three children have been placed in the custody of his mother, Katherine Jackson. Michael Jackson’s three children asked to see their father’s body in the UCLA emergency room after they were told he was dead, according to the lawyer for Jackson’s personal doctor. “My understanding is that they did” see the body, attorney Ed Chernoff said. On Monday, …

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Morning View – Virgin Union Square

The Farmboyz and I stopped by the Union Square Virgin Megastore this weekend, where they are in the last days of their closing sale. Lots of good stuff still to be had, mostly at 30-50% off. The fixtures are for sale too, in case you need a giant metal spinning 500-CD rack. (We passed on the item below.) And thus …

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Idols Rock iTunes Chart

Three tracks from Kris Allen, one from Adam Lambert, one from last year’s winner David Cook, as well some of the guest performers from American Idol’s final all crowd the top of today’s iTunes national downloads chart, although Wednesday’s premiere of Glee provides the country’s top downloaded tune – a cover of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Really. Via Billboard: Multiple …

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Daily Grumble

Hey record labels – thanks for the avalanche of weekly emails about your latest smash releases. But when I go to your YouTube clip and see “embedding disabled by request”…man, you people really don’t understand what blogging is all about.

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Morning View – Bleecker Records

One of the few surviving relics of Manhattan’s once booming record shop trade.

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The End Of Virgin

Virgin Megastore has announced that it will close its San Francisco location at the end of April. NYC’s Times Square store closes then too, with the Union Square store following at the end of May. That leaves the chain with three remaining locations: Denver, Orlando, and Hollywood. However an industry insider tells me today that those three stores will shutter …

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One Less Virgin In Times Square

The busiest record store in the country, Virgin Times Square, will be closing in April, much earlier than previously announced. The coming closure of the Union Square location was announced last year, but no final date of business is known. Music retailing, what little is left, has effectively been returned to the place from which it first sprang over 40 …

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No Madonna For YouTube?

Warner Music announced yesterday that they will be pulling their clips from YouTube in a compensation dispute. Warner Music Group’s videos will no longer be available on YouTube due to a contract dispute between the music company and the popular video-sharing website, US media reported. Talks between the two firms over licensing agreements for Warner’s music videos collapsed last week, …

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And Then There Were None

Six months after the announcement that the Virgin Megastore in Union Square will be closing in early 2009, today comes the news of the same fate for the Times Square store, leaving Manhattan with zero music retail chain outlets. Unless you count joints like Best Buy or Starbucks, which I totally don’t. Says the company that bought Virgin Megastores North …

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