Bob, you’re killing me.

The U.S. launched a streaming music chart in March, months before this UK chart. It’s called the On-Demand Songs Chart. It’s a Billboard chart that measures all songs played on-demand on Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, Slacker, Muve and soon Zune and Sony Music Unlimited.

You can find it here: http://www.billboard.com/charts/on-demand-songs

The data from that chart also now influences rankings in the Hot 100 as well.

When I left Billboard I started consulting w/ NARM’s digitalmusic.org division, and this was the first thing we did with Nielsen/Billboard and our members (all of the music subscription services).

Just saying…

Antony Bruno
Community Manager/Advisor
digitalmusic.org

Well, I was wrong, turns out there is a U.S. streaming chart…

But why do they call it "On-Demand" instead of streaming?

And why does Nielsen/Billboard not promote it?

As for BigChampagne’s "Ultimate Chart", I’ve yet to figure that one out…it seems as trustworthy and believable as the voting on Dick Clark awards shows.

We need one new chart based on bedrock statistics with no interpretation or weighing to quantify what’s going on in music.

Trumpeting SoundScan is like citing MTV clip rotation.
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While I’ve got your attention:

"Report Shows Big Increase in Spotify’s Payouts to Indie Labels"

STREAMING CHART

It launches next week in the U.K. Once again, our English brethren are ahead of the U.S., the self-described GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!

Ed Sheeran is the most streamed act in the U.K.

He means nothing in the U.S.

When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn. International boundaries mean nothing in music. You need to launch in every territory simultaneously. The labels are living in the sixties.

Lana Del Rey is number two and David Guetta is number three. There goes that mantra that no one wants to listen to electronic music at home.

Rihanna is number four and Coldplay is number five. But most interestingly, Adele doesn’t even make the Top Ten.

Because "21" is not on Spotify.

There goes that paradigm.

First and foremost, an artist wants to be number one. Just ask Madonna! Her album is a stiff and ticket sales are nowhere near as good as the disinformation campaign at Live Nation tells us they are, but she gets to say she had a number one album!

If streaming dominates, are these acts gonna stay off the service?

Actually, streaming ALREADY dominates. According to Nielsen, in the U.S. 26% of people streamed as opposed to the 17% who listened to purchased files last year.

Meanwhile, YouTube dominates. It makes up 55% of online streaming.

So staying off Spotify accomplishes..?

Most people are listening for free on YouTube.

And you’re not gonna chart.

The acts are gonna run to be on Spotify.

Meanwhile, YouTube is not included in the streaming chart yet. That’s the music business, always an ostrich.

"Spotify and other streaming services get own chart"

"On-demand music gets own chart"

TOP 200 ALBUMS

1. Carrie Underwood "Blown Away"

Sales this week: 267,338
Debut

And it ain’t gonna go up.

This is how far we’ve come, despite saturation advertising, most people just don’t care, they don’t need to own Carrie Underwood’s new album.

We can chalk it up to alternatives… Would you rather play video games? If you want to see belters, is "The Voice" more entertaining?

Sure, she’s number one…but number one ain’t what it used to be.

As for that old saw that country fans don’t have computers, 107,151 of these albums were sold digitally. Yes, the sun is setting on the CD…GOOD RIDDANCE!

Not that I’m a fan of lo-fi MP3s. But with streaming services, as broadband improves, sound quality can be upgraded. But rights holders like broadband slow, so no one will steal. Huh? With better sound, acoustic music sounds better. Quiet sounds better. What HD did to TV hi-res audio can do for music. But that requires you to pay more taxes and get the government to invest.

Or maybe you’d just rather listen to your old Fleetwood Mac CDs…

3. "Now 42"

Sales this week: 94,689
Debut

And every track’s a hit?

Who needs the album when you can buy the hits individually?
The lead-off cut on this compilation is Kelly Clarkson’s "Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)". It’s sold 3,067,798 digital singles so far. Everybody who wants it, bought it. As for those of you lamenting the days of the album…Napster killed that, not iTunes, iTunes just monetized it.

33. Rufus Wainwright "Out Of The Game"

Sales this week: 11,594
Debut

Didn’t Rufus say this was his pop album, the one with singles that was gonna break him through?

Hogwash.

Rufus, admit who you are. A gay man with a dedicated audience. Junk your label, go completely independent, use Kickstarter, milk your hard core audience for every dime its got…THEY LOVE YOU!

Your only hope of growing is if your core audience spreads the word. Play to them, not to everybody

49. Bruce Springsteen "Wrecking Ball"

Sales this week: 10,961
Weeks on: 9
Percentage change: -28.1
Cume: 386,976

"Just back from Jazzfest. Boss reminded me of ‘Up With People.’"

An e-mail from my favorite retired rock critic, ____ ______.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

We’ve become our parents. Springsteen mugs, he’s upbeat and the audience revels in has-beenism, what once was.

Don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger.

DIGITAL ALBUMS

The Beastie Boys are at number 6, 16 and 23, with "Licensed To Ill", "Paul’s Boutique" and "Solid Gold Hits", with 15,349, 7,189 and 6,196 sales respectively. None were on the chart the previous week.

Remember when Elvis died and there was almost no inventory and RCA pressing plants had to work overtime?

Then you’re really old.

There’s endless inventory in the digital world.

As for why albums cost the same, with no manufacturing and shipping costs involved, you’ll have to ask the labels.

Then again, the sun is setting on digital track pricing anyway…it’s being eclipsed by streaming.

DIGITAL SONGS

13. Eric Church "Springsteen"

Sales this week: 78,956
Weeks on: 11
Percentage change: -1
Cume: 739,170

The Boss himself is not on this chart.

Then again, why should he be? Church’s track is better than anything on Bruce’s album, which is a circle jerk for fans only.

If only Bruce actually cut something this good.

Unlike "Wrecking Ball", Eric’s vocal is mixed right up front, especially important in this lo-fi era. And Eric’s written a better chorus than the Boss’s single "We Take Care Of Our Own". There’s the nostalgia of "Bobby Jean" without being maudlin, and melodic changes closer to the Beatles than any of Bruce’s recent work.

Then again, Eric Church is a renegade.

And Bruce Springsteen is a prisoner of his audience.

116. Avicii "Levels"

Sales this week: 19,133
Weeks on: 26
Percentage change: -15.5
Cume: 770,525

Keep saying electronic music is a fad and no one listens to it and no one buys it. Is it working for you?

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We’re in the death throes of the SoundScan era. It’s no longer a good metric. Hell, even back in the day, just because someone bought an album, did that mean they LISTENED to it?

That’s the new metric… Did you listen to my music?

That’s your goal.

Putting out an album might make you feel good, but if only your hard core buys it and no one else ever hears it then I hope you’re satisfied.

But most acts are not.

Now, more than ever, excellence is king. It’s no longer about pleasing gatekeepers, but finding your own holes and driving your music through. Used to be if you could get on radio and MTV, you were made. Now radio is fading and MTV has got nothing to do with music.

You lead with your track.

People can only listen to one track at one time. If they love that, they want more. But putting ten tracks in their face all at once just overwhelms them. And sixty plus minute albums even overwhelm fans.

I’d say everything’s changing, but truly, everything’s changed.

Instead of starting out young, you’re better off getting seasoning.

Your goal is to release a track so good that fans will adopt it and spread the word for you.

They’re all you can count on, the people.

In music, we live in a great democracy. Ain’t it grand!

And for those who talk about TV shows and radio…how’s that typewriter working for you?

He met his partner in a diner. Perry was his waiter.

I know this guy Shak. Shakil Khan to be exact. He’s hipper and more genuine than any rock star. He was the consigliere for Spotify.

But he made almost ten mil before that as an entrepreneur. He invested in Spotify, he wanted to watch his money. He’s gone from there now. He’s at Path today.

Anyway, hanging with Shak is different from hanging with the musicians. He doesn’t constantly tell you how great he is. There’s no level of intimidation. You can be friends.

Shak connected Daniel Ek to Facebook. He got connected to Sean Parker via the Summit Series.

The Summit Series?

I met that cat in the desert. They just raised tens of millions to buy Powder Mountain, a ski area in Utah.

Interested yet?

You see tech people are the new rock stars. And tech is the new music. Where young people are doing it for themselves. Working really hard to make their dreams come true, unrestricted by the so-called "man" who’s so busy driving his Mercedes and being seen in the right places that he’s clueless as to what’s really going on.

So I wrote about Kickstarter and Shak connected me with Yancey. One of the founders. We just got off the phone.

He was an English major. He comes from middle class Virginia. His parents weren’t rich. Take that chip off your shoulder, the only reason you’re not successful is you.

So Yancey graduates from college and moves to Coney Island with a bunch of other cats. Where he becomes, get this, a rock critic. Writing for Pitchfork amongst other outlets.

He gets a full-time job, then goes indie and then goes to work for eMusic, where he’s employed when he meets Perry.

Perry had an idea. Back in 2001. Why didn’t they have music AFTER the show at JazzFest? That’s how he came up with the idea for Kickstarter, if only he could find out who was interested and guarantee they’d come.

But that idea never got off the ground. But Perry didn’t forget about it. Four years later, in 2005, he told Yancey.

Are you getting this? FOUR YEARS! Long enough for Justin Bieber to go through puberty and get married. Do you have that kind of patience?

And it wasn’t until four years after that that the site launched.

Because they didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t have anyone who could code and were blundering along until…

They made contacts.

Maybe people you don’t know, but those with power in the online world. Like Caterina Fake, who started Flickr. Who introduced them to someone who personified Malcolm Gladwell’s connector, this woman knew everybody. Which led them to Andy Baio and ultimately even Fred Wilson.

Music ain’t like this. Nobody at the top wants to help anybody at the bottom. It’s all about ME ME ME, whereas the younger generation is all about US! There’s enough money to go around, and your contacts are everything.

Yup, the world is being rebuilt brick by brick by people who grew up connected, baby boomers have been left out.

So finally the site launches. After they get a good coder, someone who can make the site work.

Yancey’s goal, along with his two partners Perry and Charles, was to get one project funded in a month.

Three were funded in the first week.

So you get this straight… When you send out your MP3 and nobody cares it’s because of the MUSIC! Stop telling yourself how great you are and realize you’ve got to go back to the drawing board. If you’re truly that great, people will CLAMOR for you!

And speaking of getting started…

Did the Kickstarter trio hire a PR agent? Did they go for mainstream press? No, they sent invites to fifty friends, and each got five more to pass on. And Andy Baio wrote a blog post. THAT’S IT!

Are you willing to put in the time to create something so good it sells itself?

And then two weeks in, this artist from Georgia, Allison Weiss, created a pitch so good, it’s still the template for Kickstarter projects today:

Allison Weiss makes a full-length record!

She made the classic intro video. Your fans/members will help you out, if you just let them play.

And this past January, 10% of the entrants at Sundance were Kickstarter projects.

This is not a fad, this is not a phase, funding has been wrested from the fat cats and put in the hands of the proletariat.

But that does not mean anybody but the few fans of these acts care.

But in the future… Mainstream acts will break or fund via Kickstarter… Who wouldn’t want to? YOU GET TO KEEP ALL THE MONEY! There’s no label ripping you off, not accounting for what it does owe.

And, an entire infrastructure will be built around Kickstarter. All those things the label says it provides…marketing, etc…will be done by newbies. Especially as radio and traditional media outlets fade.

This is the power of the Internet.

We’ve heard from the old guard for far too long that it ruined America.

No, it’s FIXING America. Putting power back into the hands of the people. Giving opportunities to those savvy hard workers who were closed out before. People who the label won’t give a job to, who are doing it for themselves.

Yancey Strickler

1

I got contacted by the George Stroumboulopoulos show.

Don’t worry, I had no idea who he was either. They wanted me to be on during CMW, i.e. Canadian Music Week, I said no, I wanted to go to lunch with my buddies.

But in making plans for said soiree with Barbara, I let drop that George’s show had contacted me, but she and her buds were more important.

Barbara said I LOVE GEORGE! IF YOU DO THE SHOW CAN I GO?

Then she proceeded to explain that George used to be a veejay on MuchMusic, Canada’s MTV, and he now had a late night interview show everybody watched. Who knew?

Certainly not me.

So I contacted the producer and said yes.

And did the show.

Which never aired as scheduled. It kept getting bounced. And then one day, close to a week later, I turned on my computer and all hell was breaking loose.

They aired my show.

And they aired it a couple of more times.

And when I went into a sushi bar in Toronto years later, the chef said…I SAW YOU ON GEORGE!

And I wasn’t even gonna do it.

2

If you believe in planning, if you like things to run smoothly, go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer. The odds of strange things happening is low. Instead, you’ll plod along and get your boring just reward.

If you want to go into entertainment, throw the plans out the window. You never know what will break you through.

Everybody says they’re waiting for their one big break. Usually, it’s multiple breaks. But they’re all unpredictable. You say to yourself…if only I can get that opening slot. Then you play to a half-filled hall of people who don’t care. Then you say…if I can only get on TV and you play Leno or Letterman and after the buzz of performing wears off…nothing.

Then you’re performing at a charity gig you don’t want to do, playing to fifteen people on a side stage, and it turns out one of them is a powerful agent, and you get signed and are on your way.

Or you’re at dinner with your college buddy catching up and you let drop that you now perform music and it turns out his uncle is a bigwig who takes you under his wing…and you almost forgot to tell your friend about your career travails, you didn’t want it to be one of THOSE dinners.

Yes, most people are selling all the time. But it’s when you stop selling and start living, take off your marketing hat and start doing your act, that the rewards start to flow.

3

Last night I was listening to Radiolab and they told the story of Joe Engressia, Jr., the original Phone Phreaker. Which in case you missed the memo involves replicating telephone tones to make free calls.

He got busted.

And when he did, news stories started to flow. And this united the Phone Phreaking universe. And do you know who was a Phone Phreaker? Steve Wozniak and his buddy Steve Jobs. They sold blue boxes. Inspired by Joe’s story, they knew they were not alone.

Joe thought it was a bad thing to get busted, but it broke his life wide open.

4

I was just listening to Howard Stern interview Andy Cohen of Bravo. Not only did he create "Top Chef" and the "Housewife" shows as head of programming, he now has his own late night show, live, at 11, from Sunday through Thursday, it often beats Conan in the ratings.

But he didn’t plot to be on air. His boss, Laura Zalaznick, suggested it. Well, not at first…

You see he was sending her e-mail, reveling in the antics of participants on "Battle Of The Network Reality Stars". She told him to turn his musings into a blog. That led to an online show and then hosting some reunion shows on the channel. Eventually, Andy got his own show on the TV network.

But he did fifty online shows. And he wasn’t that good as a host at first.

You go for the ride. You get into the canoe, you paddle a bit, but you’ve got no idea where you’re gonna end up.

Get in the game. Relax your mind.

If you continue to play, you just might have a happy accident, you just might make it.