1. Alicia Keys "As I Am"

Sales this week: 61,259
Percentage change: +3
Weeks on chart: 12
Cume: 2,907,459

Rumor has it that Clive Davis has no new protege to introduce at this year’s Grammy party. Could it be that you just can’t break an Alicia Keys anymore?

Alicia Keys was established at the tail end of the last era, when we were all paying attention to the mainstream, when MTV still aired videos, when men like Mr. Davis still had control. But how would you break a Ms. Keys today? Even with TV exposure, and a Super Bowl appearance, Jordin Sparks can’t sell tonnage. And what are the odds of getting an unexposed newbie to sing the national anthem? The big slots are taken up by the big players. Networks want stars for their events. If you’re already a star, fine. If not, you’re gonna go very slowly.

As for Ms. Keys herself, she’s outselling Kanye and Fitty because she’s likable. She’s not completely without edge, but she’s not offensive and she doesn’t come across as an egomaniac. You want to have dinner with her, you believe she will listen to you.

2. "Juno"

Sales this week: 54,696
Percentage change: -16
Weeks on chart: 5
Cume: 319,759

This ain’t no "Saturday Night Fever", no cultural movement. This is a small movie that people are desirous of owning the soundtrack of. A good business.

Double platinum is not in this album’s future. It’s profitable, but just a piece of the puzzle, one of the movie’s revenue streams.

3. Mars Volta "Bedlam In Goliath"

Debut
Sales this week: 53,952

Going straight down the chart. The rabid hard core fan base needed this immediately. They’ll populate the band’s concerts gigs. But you don’t need to pay attention. This is not music for the mainstream. This is a story akin to the late sixties and early seventies. A scene off the mainstream radar screen, that is real and not small and generates capital. It’s just that forty years ago, only insiders knew what was on the "Billboard" chart. Now casual viewers see the band’s name and think something’s happening, that they’re ready to explode. This isn’t true. The band will grow, if it stays together, but the Mars Volta is never going to play the Super Bowl. Maybe the X Games, but not the Super Bowl.

4. Bullet For My Valentine "Scream Aim Fire"

Debut
Sales this week: 53,223

I could lie to you and tell you I know all about this act. But I don’t know shit.

Let me look it up…

Amazon says it’s a combo of thrash, speed and punk. Basically a metal band.

Okay, I don’t have to pay attention. Everybody involved is screaming hosannas, but this is positively niche, it’s gonna sink like a stone. I don’t see a single in the iTunes chart, so I gotta figure this is what we used to call an "album act". And that’s where the money is now, in "album acts", bands that are about something more than the single. The era of the single is dead. People might want to buy tracks, but they want to believe in bands and buy many tracks, if they are good! There will be a singles business, based on Top Forty radio, but they’re both already a sideshow.

13. Sarah Brightman "Symphony"

Debut
Sales this week: 31,463

I pay attention to Sarah Brightman, not because she was married to Andrew Lloyd Webber, not because of her stage roles, but because of an album she put out on A&M entitled "Dive". With "Captain Nemo" and a cover of Procol Harum’s "Salty Dog". It was very good.

I saw this album came out, but I stopped listening when she stopped being hip and went back to playing to the old farts. I’d like to know how she reached all the old farts, this is a significant sales figure. Must be something more than the ads or reviews. Maybe she was on "Oprah" or something. That’s okay, I don’t need to know everything, no one can know everything anymore. What happens on "Oprah" is not a country-defining moment. Shit, almost no news defines the country anymore. Newspapers are tanking and we’re all surfing different sites on the Web.

17. Vampire Weekend

Debut
Sales this week: 27,501

You decide…mainstream or niche?

Vampire Weekend A-Punk

19. Alvin & the Chipmunks "Soundtrack"

Sales this week: 25,295
Percentage change: -3
Weeks on chart: 9
Cume: 274,062

This is a career act. They never sold out, all the original members are still in the band. There’s no Shemp, no Curly Joe, just Alvin, Simon and Theodore. And Simon and Theodore know who the star is. They just laugh at Alvin and pocket the bread. And if they’ve been to rehab, I’m out of the loop.

They don’t change the sound… Sure, they do contemporary material, but it still sounds like them. You’ve got to be true to who you are, you may reap some momentary rewards by following the flavor of the moment, but those new fans are casual and will abandon you, you have to play to your core, your core keeps you alive.

And they went indie too! It’s not only Radiohead and the Eagles who’ve abandoned the major labels, Alvin and his entourage have decamped to Razor & Tie, which is more nimble, which can give them more attention, can press the button on TV advertising!

Funny how the younger generation is listening to their parents’ music. But when something is great, it’s TIMELESS!

36. Robert Plant/Alison Krauss "Raising Sand"

Sales this week: 17,438
Percentage change: -15%
Weeks on chart: 15
Cume: 746,492

Holy fuck! Look at that cume!

Robert decamped from Atlantic, went to his home boy Doug Morris’ label, Universal. But couldn’t sell a record. Then he did something totally left field, on an indie, and he blows up.

If you think he’s eager to get back together with Led Zeppelin, you’ve got another thing coming. Suddenly, his career’s been REVITALIZED! And once you’ve got forward momentum, you don’t want to look back!

45. Buckcherry "15"

Sales this week: 15,752
Percentage change: +32
Weeks on chart: 94
Cume: 999,773

Metal rules! Getting fucked up and raging never go out of style, adolescents NEED this music.

This is the kind of story that used to sustain this business. Album sells for years as the good times spread from community to community. And what’s even funnier, the band had been given up for dead, they made this record by themselves!

49. Kid Rock "Rock N Roll Jesus"

Sales this week: 15,358
Percentage change: +29
Weeks on chart: 17
Cume: 731,480

From: Sue _______
Re: On Sale Dates

Amen. Always love your letters and this is so spot on! Although Kid Rock writes dumbass replies to you (that you’ve forwarded on,) at least he gets it. $30 – $45 per show, and it’s always a kickass show….and during every show he thanks fans for spending their money to see him. And, although it sounds hokey, it’s not, it’s sincere. F supporting all these jackasses – they’ve had their multiple millions, and they’ve blown them, and why should I help them rebuild their fortune? I’m living in corporate America where shit floats and too many inept folks are making the millions…not gonna help these guys reclaim their spent fortunes! (of course…..that’s until my husband finds out when ac/dc tix go on sale, etc.)

Conclusion

Sales this week were down 18.9% from the same week last year. Cumulatively, sales in 2008 are off 12% from the corresponding period in 2007.

Did Tower Records close? Was there some cataclysmic event that caused this sudden downturn? Well, maybe. More people got iPods for Christmas.

As the iPod population grows, CD sales tank. Once you’ve got the file machine, you don’t want the disk. Disks sound better than low-res MP3s, but it seems most people don’t care. Don’t forget, low quality cassettes eclipsed sales of vinyl records, which still sound better than the vaunted CD. Sound quality is not an issue, and won’t be until people start acquiring high quality sound systems. But the iPod delivers portability. How many people sit in a static place and listen to music anymore? And, good luck selling computer speakers that cost more than the computer delivering the music.

Despite Ms. Keys’ cume, this week’s sales figure is one of the lowest SoundScan chart topping totals of all time. You can debate all day long the minutiae of Warner Music’s foibles, but unless you own stock in the enterprise, you’re missing the point. The major label game, if not done, has been marginalized.

The major label was supposed to deliver tonnage for their heinous business deals. But this now appears to be impossible. Hell, as of this week, even Jay-Z’s "American Gangster" hasn’t gone platinum, and he worked at the label!

Does Mars Volta need a major label? No. I’d advise them to pull a Radiohead, and as soon as their deal is up, decamp for ATO or another indie, and take the lion’s share of their less than platinum sales. But that’s while CDs still matter. Once the CD is history, which is going to take a few more years (and it will never completely disappear, collectors will keep it alive), just license direct to the digital distributor.

The question is, what does the major label provide you?

And it’s the major labels and the publishing companies they control that are holding back the monetization of digital revenues. They say to the contrary, but do you think all those iPods are filled with legitimate music? Who else is going to refuse to monetize acquisition because it’s not done in the style they approve?

So each band is an individual entity. Maximizing revenue in all streams. Right now, recorded music is not a great profit center, but you need music to drive the enterprise. At some point in the future, music will not be free. And when that time arrives, we’re gonna have a lot of theatre acts. Only flavors of the moment will be able to sell out arenas, never mind stadia. Sure, the dinosaurs will do arena business, but that’s about nostalgia, and when the bands expire, history.

There’s a lot of money to be made in the music business. But it’s no longer Vegas, no longer about gambling, but hard work. Creating consistently good material and spreading the word from fan to fan, treating the fan as a partner as opposed to an afterthought. The nineties are gone.