Re: Lowery

I’m not gonna fill your inbox with the protestations and ministrations of the minions. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this week’s meme and I know most are not interested in the thoughts of anybody but themselves. And I maintain all this bloviating is not moving the needle, which was my original point.  But I’m going to direct you to this post by Jay Frank, because it contains some interesting statistics. I don’t agree with everything Jay says, but the underlying point is we live in a crowded marketplace that is overwhelming the consumer and to a great degree when you think piracy is holding you back, the real issue is demand…there’s just not enough of it. That’s not to say major artists are not affected by piracy, but despite Lowery counseling Emily White, to a great degree this is not an emotional issue, facts are important. I’ve excerpted a couple of Jay’s points, but I believe it behooves you to read his entire post:

"I just don’t think they’re stealing the music of the majority of artists bitching about thievery’s impact on their business. The statistics don’t bear it out."

"…is the fact that there are too many artists competing for shrinking dollars, largely due to the shift from albums to singles. Despite the economic number that David Lowery quoted of the number of professional musicians falling by 25%, if you took "album releases" as an indicator, it seems like the number of pros has increased. In a decade, we’ve gone from about 30,000 albums being released to over 77,000 last year. And that’s just albums going thru legit channels. The problem, as noted by Chris Muratore of Nielsen on the previously noted New Music Seminar panel, is that 94% of those releases sold less than 1,000 units. Indicators that I have examined showed those low sales aren’t because of people stealing them. They come from too many releases causing most people to not even realize they are out."

IS STEALING MUSIC REALLY THE PROBLEM?

And while you’re at it, you should also look at Jay’s most recent post, about music industry trends. Most importantly, the point that "Albums Earn Less Songs Earn More" – "Adele "Rolling In The Deep" sold over 11 million units in 2011, the most of any single song in the Soundscan era" and "Singles Take Longer To Break" – "Carly Rae Jepsen – Released September ’11, Peak June ’12", "Gotye – Released July ’11, Peak May ’12", "Fun. – Released September ’11, Peak March ’12", "One Direction – Released August ’11, Peak April ’12", "Foster The People – Released February ’10, Peak August ’11".

BREAKTHROUGH TRENDS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

____________________________________

From: Joe Taylor
Subject: RE: The Senate Judiciary Hearing

small point but Merlin own a piece of Spotify and Cooking Vinyl are in Merlin

Joe Taylor
Record of the Day

____________________________________

From: Scott Sommer
Subject: the power of howard stern…

Smashing Pumpkins released a new album. According to the interview with Billy Corgan, he let Howard pick any song off the record to play in full. Howard chose "Violet Rays." Billy said that was not the single and was surprised Howard picked it because it was more "out there" than many other songs.

Here is in image of the popular track ratings from the album:

(Click this link: http://bit.ly/LAcbMb and then click "View in iTunes" to the right of "Oceania – iTunes LP", which is at the top of the list.)