#1 on the Digital Songs chart is LMFAO Featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock. The name of the song is "Party Rock Anthem". I’d love to tell you I know it, but I’ve never even heard it. Top Forty is a niche that you can avoid quite easily. If you think Top Forty music rules the world, you probably work for a newspaper or weekly magazine. I have heard of LMFAO. I assume that stands for "Laughing My Fucking Ass Off", if it doesn’t, no harm, no foul. But the interesting thing is LMFAO’s album, "Sorry For Party Rocking", is mired at number 56 on the album chart, having sold 72,350 copies in six weeks and a measly 7,124 this week. In other words, people love the track, but could care less about the act. And when this is the case, touring receipts are anemic at best. Hit singles are a business, but it’s a long hard slog and it’s very expensive to compete. Meanwhile, "Party Rock Anthem" sold 201,514 copies this week for a cume of 2,667,862.

#17 on the Album chart is Mumford & Sons. They moved 18,051 copies of their album "Sigh No More" for a cume of 1,681,293 after 76 weeks on the chart. Which business would you rather be in, LMFAO or Mumford? Mumford has longevity, people are still discovering the music a year in. Its success is not based on promotion so much as the music itself, that’s what’s spreading the word today, the singles are number 130 and 133 on the Digital Songs chart. However each has sold in excess of a million copies. How many of these single purchasers ended up buying the album? This is how it was in the old days, the single was an introduction, if you liked it, you bought another single and then the whole album. Obviously, Mumford has converted a lot of people.

#3 on the Digital Songs chart is Katy Perry’s "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)". It has moved 1,747,194 copies. But Katy Perry’s "Teenage Dream" is only #19 on the album chart. Illustrating how different the charts are. The Digital Songs chart reflects Top Forty radio. Which no one in the mainstream will admit is a backwater. Whereas the career artists live long on the album chart. "Teenage Dream" has sold 1,666,399 copies in 49 weeks. In other words, Mumford is bigger than Katy. Music is more important than train-wreck. Katy’s dependent upon hits, Mumford’s got a career. As for that inane story about Katy having five #1 singles from the same album, that’s like saying you’ve broken records in the Arena Football League. Top Forty ain’t what it used to be. We’ve got a changing paradigm. Ever since MTV, the hit single has ruled, album sales have paralleled airplay. But now MTV no longer airs any music and that game is done. We’re not living in an era of singles, we’re living in an era of careers, that’s where the money is. If Katy can continue to pump out singles and sell tickets, more power to her. But history tells us that singles artists are only as hot as their last track…and it’s almost impossible to sustain a run. Especially now, when one stiff track keeps you off Top Forty radio thereafter.

Many say that Foster The People’s "Pumped Up Kicks" is the song of the summer. It’s #13 on the singles chart, having moved 742,762 copies so far, 88,370 this week. The album is #27, but has only moved 138,380 so far, 13,756 this week. In other words, people are not sold on Foster The People as a band yet, they may never be. As for those arguing that #27 on the album chart is not so bad, I’d say that 138,380 copies in a country of 300 million is positively anemic. It’s hard to get anybody to buy an album today. And with Spotify emerging, it’s gonna be even harder. It will be easier to get people to check out more of your tracks, but many won’t do even that, the single is enough. But if you’re a career artist, it’s now about a body of work, forget the concept of albums, forget first week sales, forget impressing physical retailers. It’s about having people believe you’re real, so they’ll check out more than the hit, having them believe you stand for something and are worth knowing beyond the surface of the one radio track.

Adele’s "Rolling In The Deep" is number 10 on the Digital Songs chart. It sold 106,154 tracks this week. But get ready for this, it’s got a cume of 4,691,238! That’s the equivalent of almost 500,000 albums, on this one track, enough to go gold! In the old days, the really old days, the sixties, radio would be just about done with Adele’s "21", having gone three tracks deep since its release twenty three weeks ago. It’s good for radio to stay on one track, but not good for listeners or the act. Radio’s selling advertising, it doesn’t care about music. But listeners have gravitated from Adele’s single to the album. It might have taken Katy Perry five number ones to get to 1.6 million in almost a year, but Adele has already sold 2,832,799 copies of "21" in the aforementioned twenty three weeks, 82,549 in the last seven days for #2 on the album chart. In other words, the public’s already been convinced, Adele is an album artist, she has a career. People are most interested in that which has substance, which is just not beats to party to. This is the future. But it’s much harder than going to Dr. Luke for his latest composition. Yes, Adele’s album was made by committee, but the end result has a unified vision and is unlike anything else in the marketplace, it’s sui generis. In other words, the rule of the early seventies still holds, the biggest acts sound unlike anything else.

Pitbull’s track "Give Me Everything", featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer sold 113,804 copies this week, for a staggering cume of 2,768,169, occupying number 8 on the Digital Songs chart. But his album, "Planet Pit", has only moved 142,975 in six weeks, 12,503 in the last seven days, it’s number 30 on the chart. Pitbull’s a singles artist. Singles artists are flashes in the pan. Hell, how many tickets can Mariah Carey sell today? Tickets indicate hard core fandom, they cost much more than $1.29 or ten bucks for the album. Yes, Mariah sold a lot of albums when that was all you could buy, but once you could just get the hit, most Top Forty radio artists’ album sales took a steep nosedive. And it’s not gonna change. Unless Top Forty radio starts playing the best of the best from all genres, and that’s not gonna happen.

"Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall", from Coldplay’s yet to be released new album, has only sold 469,594 singles so far, 35,785 this week, ending up at position 44. Coldplay is an album act. It’s got fans. The odds of getting Top Forty airplay, which drives single sales, is almost nonexistent. All the media hoopla will help sell the album, but Coldplay has now become the Dave Matthews Band. An act that squeaked under the old wire, when MTV still played music and Top Forty wasn’t a beat heaven, that can no longer play the hit game but will be supported by its fans, who will buy albums and tickets. But in this case, the album has to be really damn good. It can’t be about two or three hits and filler, it must be solid all the way through. Hopefully, Coldplay has achieved this, otherwise not only will album sales falter, but ticket sales too.

#89 on the Digital Songs chart is "Adventures Of Rain Dance Maggie" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It sold 19,523 copies this week, for a cume of 77,015, a drop of 66% from last week. There was little pent-up demand or people don’t think the track’s that good or RHCP fans are waiting for the album, maybe they don’t even know the single’s out. Or maybe, without Frusciante, the Chili Peppers are doomed. In any event, no matter how great the track, where would people hear it? With MTV and Top Forty radio closing them out, as opposed to building them like before? Hopefully the album will be fantastic and will solidify their base, otherwise we’ll see a repeat of the Dave Navarro era, when fans shrugged their shoulders and didn’t care. Meanwhile, could the advance single to drive album sales be dead except for Top Forty artists, who don’t sell many albums anyway? Where is someone supposed to hear the single? And now, in the era of Spotify, is listening completely different. Maybe you don’t listen to your favorite act only when it’s got a new album, maybe your favorite act keeps feeding you one or two new tracks on a regular basis so you’ll listen to the band constantly, forever. The money’s in the streams, the Spotify streams. That’s gonna change the whole dynamic of both music-making and promotion. It’ll be less about the hit, and more about the stickiness to the act.

"Don’t Stop Believin’" has sold 4,662,900 tracks so far. It’s the new "Stairway To Heaven".

Kidz Bop Kidz sold another 38,651 copies of their album, "Kidz Bop 20", for a cume of 107,416 after 2 weeks, holding the number 6 position on the chart. This is the future. Think before you record. Don’t play the Top Forty game. Play for the long haul. Establish name familiarity, a franchise. Then again, TV advertising helps so much with this "act", something most performers, especially new ones, cannot afford.