The City Selected A New Operator For The Troubled Lincoln Theatre Back In April, And Now, Finally, We

                                 The city selected a new operator for the troubled Lincoln Theatre back in April, and now, finally, we know who it is. I.M.P. Productions, the company that owns the 9:30 Club and books Merriweather Post Pavilion, will take over booking at the U Street NW venue beginning in September, the mayor's office announced this afternoon.

The Lincoln, a historic music venue and former movie house, is owned by the city, which took direct control of the theater's operations in 2012 following years of shaky finances and inconsistent booking by a nonprofit. While it's been run by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, not much has gone on at the Lincoln, but the agency has been pursuing a for-profit operator for the venue since December.

I.M.P. has booked shows at the 1,225-seat theater before, including sold-out stands by Jeff Tweedy in 2010 and Jeff Mangum in 2012. I.M.P. chair Seth Hurwitz wasn't available to talk this afternoon—he's on an airplane, he says in an email—but says this in the press release:

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Check out some footage from the Welcome To Forever Tour at The Fillmore in Maryland June 23rd.

Lyriciss - 0:29

Uno Hype - 1:18

Alan Johnson - 2:04

QuESt - 2:27

Logic - 5:06

According to Billboard SoundScan mid-year numbers provided by A2IM, report, indie labels hit a record high with 34.4% of the overall market share based on master ownership (not distribution). That's up from last year's mid-year mark of 32.9%. Top selling independent label artists so far this year include:

(noted in album/TEA sales)

Mumford & Sons - 1.1M albums (Glassnote Records, combined album totals for all their releases)

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - 670k albums (Macklemore, LLC)\

The Lumineers - 660K albums (Dualtone Music Group)

Taylor Swift - 635K albums 

Jason Aldean - 310K albums (Broken Bow) 

Vampire Weekend - 275K albums (The Beggars Group)

Alabama Shakes - 250K albums (ATO Records)

Queens of the Stone Age - 150K albums (Matador Records)

THE COMPLETE #TRILLECTRO LINEUP IS FINALLY HERE! GRAB YOUR TICKET TODAY: trillectro.com/tickets (at Trillectro Music Festival)

Show on Wednesday! Who’s coming? Hit me up for tickets

Digital tracks sales are on the decline and the trend is accelerating.

For the year to date as of June 30, digital track sales have declined 2.3% to 682.2 million units from the 698 million units that tracks scanned in the first half of 2012, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

In the first quarter, track sales declined 1.34% to 356.5 million from the 361.3 million. In the second quarter the decline more than doubled to 3.3%, with track sales totaling 325.7 million units this year versus 336.7 million in the second quarter of 2012.

At mid-year, 51 songs had scanned more than 1 million units. Thirteen of them scanned two million units or more, led by the 5.6 million units garnered by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ "Thrift Shop" (featuring Wanz).

Last year, two titles accomplished the feat of scanning more than five million units -- Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" (featuring Kimbra) and Fun's "We Are Young" (featuring Janelle Monae). A total of 47 titles hit the 1 million unit mark, of which 13 were more than million scans.

So far, Justin Timberlake's "The 20/20 Experience" is the best-selling album with 2.04 million scans. It is in fact, the only million-seller as Bruno Mars "Unorthodox Jukebox" -- with scans at 985,000 units -- looks like it will need another week to break the million-unit milestone. Last year, only one album had scanned more than 1 million units -- Adele's "21," which had scanned 3.7 million units.

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