1. Pearl Jam "Backspacer"

Sales this week: 189,292
Debut

Ah, the dreaded Guns N’ Roses effect.  Insiders think public cares and it doesn’t.

Pearl Jam had one album, "Ten", with "Jeremy".  Refusing to play the MTV game, they maintained their longevity, but are not superstars.  Well, let’s just say that most people don’t care.  Most people care about the momentary hits.  People with careers have a niche audience.  Which may be large, but is far from everybody.

This illustrates that the big box paradigm is dying.  Sure, Pearl Jam got paid, but just because you’ve got all those displays where everybody shops, that doesn’t mean anybody cares.  This is a terrible number by "Last Road Out Of Eden" standards.  Granted, PJ is not the Eagles, but if you listen to the press and PJ’s fans they’re superior to the Eagles!

So, we had to read about all the marketing innovation.  But it was just a circle jerk.  Everybody praying the business was not dying claimed Pearl Jam was getting it right.  Customers were completely out of the loop.

This is a piss-poor number.  And if you say otherwise, you’re working for the band.

This is a live act.  A nostalgia act.  Its only way of growing would be to turn into the Grateful Dead.  Playing new material live, hoping its fans trade it, hoping its core buys it.

Not a bad business, but not the cover of "Newsweek".  Then again, who gives a shit about the cover of "Newsweek" or "Time" anymore?

2. Jay-Z "Blueprint 3"

Sales this week: 134,134
Percentage change: -55
Weeks on: 3
Cume: 908,135

We thought LL Cool J was the sustaining rapper, but it turned out to be Jay-Z.  Then again, this album was sold with a ton of hype.  Jay-Z was everywhere, even Bill Maher.  Bill Maher?  Is Jay-Z political?  Who knows.  But even HBO plays by twentieth century rules, you can’t turn down a get.  But, if every audience is niche, you end up pissing off more people than you are pleasing.  Every fan of Maher’s show I spoke to was on backlash, why was Mr. Carter on?

But the real story here is Kanye.  In the old days, one reporter would have found out the truth behind his VMA blow-up. There are a ton of questions.  Why was Kanye on stage to begin with?  Ever been at a big production like this?  There’s a stage manager, corralling talent.  Wouldn’t be tough to find out the truth, whether the whole thing was staged.  But the blogosphere bloviated and the straight press is so short-handed and reporters are so beholden to talent, enthralled and desirous of being stars themselves, that even though the President commented, no writer came up with the truth.

Shameful.

3. Three Days Grace "Life Starts Now"

Sales this week: 79,230
Debut

Everybody involved is giving high fives.  But expect this album to slide down the chart immediately.

Or, look at it this way.  What kind of fucked up world do we live in where an almost unknown band enters the chart at number three selling fewer than 100,000 records?  One in which old sales metrics aren’t so important and stars have less power than ever before.

4. Whitney Houston "I Look To You"

Sales this week: 65,820
Percentage change: -58
Weeks on: 4
Cume: 620,301

I’m stunned.  By today’s standards, this is a whopping number.  And the only thing driving it is Whitney herself, there’s no single action, no track that has attained ubiquity.  But put her CD in supermarkets, everywhere known to man, get her on Oprah testifying and casual music buyers are interested.  Not tons, but a lot by 2009 standards.

We’ll all remember Whitney saying "crack is whack", but no one will remember this album.

6. Brand New "Daisy"

Sales this week: 45,799
Debut

Ditto on Three Days Grace above.

Both reasonable acts, both playing to a core.

They might each get some radio play, but don’t expect either to blow up.  They don’t play Top Forty music, and that’s how you blow up today.  But by chasing this game, major labels are running towards oblivion.  With so few albums sold, and the money is still in albums, is it worth it diverting all that attention to a dying game?  It’s kind of like GM making SUVs while Toyota was selling hybrids.  SUVs were for now, hybrids were for the future.  So major labels have 360 degrees of these radio acts?  Isn’t that like having a high percentage of SUV sales?  Or, to quote the Beatles’ sometime pianist, "Nothing from nothing leaves nothing".

7. Five Finger Death Punch "War Is The Answer"

Sales this week: 44,197
Debut

See Three Days Grace and Brand New above.

This is a metal band.  This is the highest this album will ever chart.  This is the modern paradigm.  Metal bands make it on the road.  And when they garner fans, listeners stay with them forever.  Better to have one Five Finger Death Punch than Flo Rida.

10. Muse "Resistance"

Sales this week: 35,957
Percentage change: -72
Weeks on: 2
Cume: 164,784

Did everybody who wants this album already buy it?

Phenomenal live band that hasn’t worked in America enough.

To succeed, they should play every festival next summer.  People have to see them, more than fans, in order for the band to grow.  But the band are stars across the Pond, it’s hard to get them over here.  So, despite the VMAs, despite the press, is this act stillborn?

12. David Gray "Draw The Line"

Sales this week: 35,002
Debut

What do they say, a broken clock is right twice a day?

Guy records KCRW album of the year, word spreads, he becomes a star.  Doesn’t realize what happens, continues to have the creative brain of a niche artist.  Opportunity squandered.

13. Taylor Swift "Fearless"

Sales this week: 34,341
Percentage change: -25
Weeks on: 46
Cume: 3,902,314

‘Cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them

Fifteen year olds aren’t looking at reviews.  They react instantly to music, as you do to fire.  Taylor Swift is Bob Dylan for the barely pubescent set.  Instead of talking down to her audience, she’s saying she’s one of them, and she wants to tell them her story, give them her insights, and they identify.  I won’t say "Fifteen" is as good as "It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)", but there’s still that same element of truth.  When you’re fifteen, you think love is forever, you haven’t been hurt.  But you will be.

This is not complicated.  In addition to insightful lyrics, the songs are catchy!  In a business that constantly tries to get us excited about outside stuff sung by people without voices making oblique statements Taylor Swift stands out not only as a striking success, but a beacon of hope.  She’s saying it’s not how good you look, that it’s okay to be geeky, and if you sing from the heart, people will react.

Stop focusing on marketing.  Start focusing on getting the music right.  Taylor Swift may seem like formula, but she’s not. Underneath it all is a girl who would do almost anything to make it.  But unlike the Disney stars of the past decade, that does not mean sacrificing one’s soul, blowing the promotion dude and doing what everybody tells you to do, but working on your art itself.  Taylor Swift’s been writing songs forever, and it all comes down to the songs.  No wonder she’s got the biggest selling album on this chart.  In an era where everybody steals, some still need to own.  When you believe in the music, when it embodies your identity.

15. Monsters Of Folk

Sales this week: 31,274
Weeks on: 2
Percentage change: +901
Cume: 34,457

What happens when you get a bunch of marginal acts together in an indie supergroup?

Still, no one cares.

19. Mika "The Boy Who Knew Too Much"

Sales this week: 27,314
Debut

Play the game of a popster, and you must have pop hits.

Mika made it on hit singles, in order to sell tonnage, he’s got to deliver more.  This is not 1973, when a band like Queen can grow slowly and make it on rock radio airplay.  Yeah, that’ll be the day, when we hear Mika on Active Rock.

The U.K. and the Continent are a couple of years and a couple of changes behind the U.S.  They still embrace mass superstars.  The twenty first century hasn’t yet hit.  But it will.

35. Owl City "Ocean Eyes"

Sales this week: 13,382
Weeks on: 11
Percentage change: +29
Cume: 98,214

If you haven’t been worked on this record, you’re not in the record business.  You might be in the music business, but not the record business.  This is the story of September.

In the old days, we all would have checked out the music, gotten excited, rallied ’round.  Today, why care?

But if you do check out the tunes, there is something there.

But if this is the great white hope of Universal, is that company the big bad wolf it likes to be perceived as being, all seeing, dominant, or is Doug Morris Oz?

There’s an Owl City business.  And I find it interesting.  But it’s not a mainstream business.  In the old days, if you broke through,  in a world where very little did, you’d made it.  But now there are so many acts that if you make it, you end up being the Fray.  A band that’s propped up by hits with very few hard core fans.

If only this were an outside story.  This is what Monsters Of Folk should be.  But, the hipsters can’t have this much melody, can’t be this sunny.  And the hipsters can’t embrace anything that’s got a shred of pop.

Owl City is closer to Jack’s Mannequin than Taylor Swift.  It’s inherently niche.  But you convinced me, you closed me.

37. Sean Kingston "Tomorrow"

Sales this week: 12,643
Debut

That’s what Mr. Kingston should be worrying about, tomorrow!

What was the name of that guy who had the novelty hit, on Universal…the one about being caught…it wasn’t me… Shaggy!

Yes, the industry gets all excited about someone who’s just created the new "Macarena", believing they’ve broken a new star, when all they’ve created is a fad.

45. Eminem "Relapse"

Sales this week: 10,901
Weeks on: 19
Percentage change: -21
Cume: 1,449,397

Wow, talk about history.  Have you heard anybody mention Marshall’s name recently?  Mathers was an early twenty first century superstar, when we were all still paying attention, when we were on MTV hangover, when there was still a monoculture.  Em would be better off pulling a Lil Wayne.  Releasing mixtapes to enhance his credibility.  Because there’s no room at the top anymore.  Unless he wants to marry Beyonce’s sister and become a business magnate and sign a huge deal with Live Nation…  But what’s that got to do with music?

 64. Jason Mraz "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things"

Sales this week: 7,271
Percentage change: +7
Weeks on: 72
Cume: 1,373,416

Cute, killer live and is nice to boot.

But that didn’t sell his second album.

It all comes down to the hit, the song, "I’m Yours".

If you want to sell records, you’ve got to have that one track that everybody embraces.  Pearl Jam would be better off with that one cut than a whole album.  But at least Pearl Jam has credibility in its favor.  Jason Mraz lives in a no-man’s land. Built by pop, he lives and dies by pop.  If you’re a popster, you’ve got to deliver that hit.  Jason did.

67. Brad Paisley "American Saturday Night"

Sales this week: 6,670
Percentage change: -17
Weeks on: 13
Cume: 337,143

Good guitar player, writes nice changes, but listening to the lyrics is like hearing the stories of the kid in home room with no friends who stays in his bedroom all weekend and likes to act like he’s got a life.  Positively awful.  Endless novelty. Won’t anybody speak the truth?  Send him off to poetry camp.  Have him sing about wooing his wife.  Enough of this sophomoric crap.

68. Kenny Chesney "Greatest Hits II"

Sales this week: 6,623
Percentage change: -20
Weeks on: 19
Cume: 426,820

He’s been so busy being Kenny Chesney, entertainer of the year, that he hasn’t released great music in years.

Kenny’s best songs were written by him.  He’s taking next summer off from touring to write.  Finally.  You can’t coast on being a star forever, that’s for those next on the chart, U2.

69. U2 "No Line On The Horizon"

Sales this week: 6,603
Percentage change: +5
Weeks on: 30
Cume: 1,010,128

There’s that SNL bounce!

Oh, don’t tell me not enough people can get to the store.  You buy those tracks online now, baby!

Assuming you’re buying them.  But U2 has turned into the Stones, it’s not about the new music, it’s about the oldies, the classics, getting you to come relive your youth.

They start off with three new tracks live.  What hubris.  Who gives a shit.  They need to write off this album and release a new track immediately, generate some buzz.  Don’t wait until the tour is done to release a new album written on the road…  Supposedly Bono is in touch?  Then doesn’t he realize the cycle has accelerated?

The last Pearl Jam hit was a cover of "Last Kiss".  Other than the revenue generated, PJ would have been better off releasing one cover or one killer track, it would have generated more buzz, sold more tickets.  Same deal with U2.

And who let out the story that U2’s costs are so exorbitant that the tour won’t break even until after the U.S. leg?  What, does Paul McGuinness still think we’re living in the nineties?  In an era of carbon offsets, of slimming down, of environmentalism, of watching the bottom line, McGuinness wants us to embrace the Escalade of tours?  We should party like it’s 1999?

Prince does it without sets, why can’t U2?

This band has left the track.  So isolated, it’s completely out of touch with reality.  They go on SNL and those who do watch are unimpressed.  If this is the biggest band in the world, that must not be a moniker one should aspire to. Because being the biggest means being a has-been lumbering giant that has no perception of how the real world works.

70. Uncle Kracker "Happy Hour"

Sales this week: 6,337
Percentage change: -51
Weeks on: 2
Cume: 19,329

Why.

Better to write a check to Kracker if he’s got a guaranteed contract than to put this out.  He had a hit once…  So?

He’s not seen as a career artist.

Majors chase hits.

It’s hard to get one and they pay fewer dividends than ever before.

CONCLUSION

No one seems to realize you can’t get rich anymore.

You can’t sell enough albums, you can’t sell enough high-priced tickets.

The music industry is functioning like it’s still the 1990s when a revolution has taken place.

It’s not about stopping P2P theft, that won’t make album sales go up dramatically.  The public just doesn’t care.  Who could, about manufactured crap or stuff that’s too hip for almost anybody’s room.

And they may never care, not for years.

So it’s back to the bunker.

Yes, you’ve got to be in it for the music.  You’ve got to love to play.  You can’t want to become rich, because even a Top Forty hit generates little cash.  It’s about having a career.  But those with careers are not flying private and buying Lamborghinis unless they made it in the seventies.  And no one wants to overpay to see those dudes one more time.

Major labels have fired the worker bees.  It would be like Facebook being run by an overpaid Mark Zuckerberg, and him alone.  But these big tech companies have tons of infrastructure.  There’s no infrastructure at a major anymore.

And with a tech company it’s all about scale.  Can it grow?

The majors are anti-scale.  It’s how can we cut enough overhead and get enough rights so we can still pay our presidents millions?  This is a recipe for the future?

And the formerly brain dead touring industry can’t see there’s a problem.  Used to be the agents and promoters lived on the backs of the record companies.  The labels spent to build stars that people wanted to see.  Now, the labels don’t have that kind of money, albums don’t sell well enough, hell, they want some of that touring industry money themselves!

So what does the touring industry do?  Raise prices!

But the audience has had enough.  And they don’t want to see new bands, why should they?  It’s more fun to play games on your iPhone, cruise for dates on Craigslist, which is positively free.

If the money is coming back, music has to drive the culture.  Going to the show must be a monthly occurrence, not a once a year event.

Breaking bands takes a long time.   Oh, you can try a short cut, with a hit single, but that doesn’t generate a career.

So, the turning point has come.  Everybody in it for the money is experiencing his last hurrah.  Finally, the stage is set for new players, doing it only for the music, to rebuild the industry.  Because there’s just not enough money in it for the old powers to continue to reign.  And only interested in the biggest sellers, who don’t sell crap anymore, they’re leaving a ton of crumbs on the table.

Majors should get out of new music production, they do it poorly, the risk to reward ratio is horrible.  They should just be catalog houses.  When will they admit this to themselves?

Live Nation’s problems are worse.  There are no stars to fill their buildings.  A merger with Ticketmaster brings talent, but does one expect Irving to just hand over acts on bad terms?  And those ancient acts can’t sell tickets like they used to.

Holy fuck.  While everybody’s been focusing on people stealing the music, the whole business imploded.  The album model has been destroyed.  You’re better off selling one hit single on iTunes and having no album!  The concept of a hit driving fans to hear the other nine tracks is laughable.  People know the rest is crap.  They’ve learned this over decades. It will take years to convince them otherwise.  But you’ve got to start with great music, that’s the only way out of this.  And there’s just not enough of it.  Because the industry is leaving the consumer out of the equation.  Labels sell to radio and indies are so busy trying to look hip, most people don’t pay attention.  A sorry state of affairs, but not terminal.  Just like Facebook eclipsed MySpace almost instantly, music could be revived again.  But not by Rupert Murdoch and those fucks at MySpace, they’re too old wave, but by innovators.  You might decry Twitter, but there’s more action there than there is on this chart.  Twitter is everything music used to be…immediate, thrilling, satisfying, educational…and you could be a part of it!  Interscope doesn’t care about fans, it cares about lifestyle, that of its executives, and the fans know it.  I don’t see Jimmy inviting Black Eyed Peas fans into the building to romp and participate.  It’s us versus them in the music business whereas online we’re all in it together, the customer is truly king.

History has wiped the landscape clean.  We’re at the dawn of a new age.  Thank fucking god.