"No New Friends" Video Shoot

"No New Friends" Video Shoot

Even though CD revenues have fallen sharply over the last ten years, most predictions about the format have been wrong. The CD's decline, while painful to companies, has been far more gradual than precipitous. Over the last four years, CD revenues have leveled off just as an airplane would before a soft landing.

The one thing everybody has correctly predicted is that the CD would decline. CD revenues fell 77.5% to $2.5 billion in 2012 from $11.2 billion in 2003, according to RIAA numbers released last week. The deepest losses occurred in 2007 and 2008, when CD revenues dropped over $1.9 billion each year. Total revenues suffered badly as a result in those years, falling 9.4% and 17.6% in 2007 and 2008, respectively. More recent years have not been as bad. After four straight years of deficits that exceeded 20% (from 2007 to 2010) CD revenues declined 8.5% in 2011 and 18.3% in 2012.

Continue Reading

An outcry is being heard in the D.C. Facebook Community over Wale’s comments during a recent interview on MTV’s Rap Fix Live.  Shout out to Crank Brothers for bringing this to my attention!

This is what people are saying:

“SMH!!! Thank you Wale for digging a deeper hole for GoGo. With the platform that he has and represents, he is in a position where whatever he said is a stampage. Music is never violent. Yes… the meeting place for violence is at the Go-Go but saying gogo is violent on an international TV station (MTV) is reckless and disrespectful. That’s like dialing 911 and telling the police you rob banks. Now they got you in a scope not trusting your every move. Crazy how he forgot his “first hit” was a Go-Go song and second was too.  Had to share this fam...” -Crank Brothers

Continue Reading

For the second time since SoundScan started counting downloads in 2003, track sales suffered a sales decline, something that occurred in the first three quarters of 2010. So far this year, track sales are down 1.3% as of March 31, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

This year, industry executives attribute the decline to a lack of hits. Last time in 2010, they blamed LimeWire. But after the peer-to-peer site was shutdown, track sales rallied and closed out the year with a 1.1% increase.

In 2013, only 15 songs have reached the 1 million unit milestone so far, while last year 21 songs accomplished that feat. But this year's best selling song download, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' "Thrift Shop," has scanned almost 4.2 million units. Last year's best selling title for the first quarter was Fun.'s "We Are Young" (featuring Janelle Monae), which scanned 2.75 million units.

Against that, album sales totaled 74 million during the first quarter, down from 77.8 million units, a drop of 4.9%. Within that, CD sales were down 15.4% to 40 million from 47.4 million in the first quarter of 2012; digital album sales increased 10.4% to 32.4 million units, up from 29.4 million units.

With nearly 1.3 million in scans, Justin Timberlake's new album, "The 20/20 Experience," is the top selling album this year, as well as the top selling digital album with 558,000 downloads.

Overall, albums (plus track equivalent ones whereby 10 tracks equal one album) dropped 3.8% to 109.7 million units, down from 114 million units in the first quarter of 2012.

Continue Reading

Over the past few weeks I’ve asked 30 extraordinary people in the music industry for their most valuable words of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Without further ado, here are 30 pieces of advice from 30 music industry entrepreneurs.

                                  “We are no longer subject to what was, only to what works. We can honor what came before us, but at the same time we have to be constantly aware of how fast this new generation moves. The new does not have to be scary and it’s allot less risky than it ever was. It just looks radically different than it ever did and we have to embrace that. Yesterdays fans are not coming back and so we should simply stop trying to find them.” - Benji Rogers, CEO, Pledge Music

                                     “Nothing speaks louder than an amazing product. Focus on that, and “buzz” usually takes care of itself. Also try and get one marquee client on board per vertical that you’re going after. For example, after Madonna came on board in 2009, we had a much easier time selling in the music business. This was the same for sports after we began working with the Miami Dolphins.” - Michael Schneider, CEO, Mobile Roadie

Continue Reading