Publisher Terrell Tye Passes

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Nashville music industry veteran Terrell Tye, 58, passed away peacefully on Christmas morning at 7 a.m. She is survived by her loving sons Josh and Zack Allen and brother Dowell Tye. Tye was also the former wife of Grand Ole Opry member Hal Ketchum.

Terrell Tye was a partner in Forerunner music, an innovative publishing partnership that included producer Allen Reynolds, singer-songwriter Jim Rooney and engineer Mark Miller. The company was purchased in 2000 by Universal Music Publishing and its catalog included hits by Ketchum, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill and many others.

Josh and Zack Allen have invited their mother’s friends to a memorial service on 12/31 at 12 p.m. “Terrell was an exceptional woman and Zack and I ask that you join us in remembering her on Friday 12/31 at 12p.m. The service is being held at Marshall Donnelly Combs Funeral Home at 201 25th Avenue, Nashville, TN 37203 with a wake afterwards at the home of Todd & Laurie Hilbert at 1703 Warfield Drive in Green Hills. If you would like to bring a covered dish for the wake it will be appreciated. Also, please reach out to any of her friends who you believe might not have this information, and keep her and her family in your prayers during these difficult times. Thank all of you for your support and we look forward to seeing you on Friday.”

Sony Goes To The Cloud With Music Unlimited

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Have you found yourself thinking lately, “Hey, I wish there were more subscription-based music services available to me as a consumer?”

Right. We thought not.

But apparently no one notified Sony, who unveiled its Music Unlimited service in the U.K. and Ireland this week boasting a catalog of approximately 6 million titles from Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI Music and Sony Music. Sony has plans to expand the Music Unlimited to the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy and Spain in 2011.

The service, powered by Sony’s Qriocity (pronounced: curiosity) entertainment platform, is being offered at two price levels. The basic plan, for £3.99 euros/month, is similar to an ad-free internet radio station but will allow users to skip forward at will (think Pandora or Last.fm). The premium version for £9.99 euros/month grants users the ability to play songs from the entire catalog on demand. Users at either level will also be able to sync info from their music libraries into the subscription cloud.

“So let’s see,” wrote Guardian authors Josh Halliday and Charles Arthur, putting some skepticism on the announcement. “Spotify with ads for free, or Sony MUPBQ for £3.99 every month for ever and ever?”

Perhaps the biggest draw is that Music Unlimited will be compatible with Sony’s array of consumer electronics. Internet-connected Blu-Ray players, Bravia television sets, and the Playstation 3 console will be able to use it, and so will Sony smart phones and computers. Smart phones running Google’s Android operating system will have an app that runs it, though it does not appear to be compatible with the iPhone at present.

As the LA Times points out, one major hurdle facing Sony and Music Unlimited is the fact that a myriad of similar products are already available in Europe and the U.S. Spotify (based in Sweden) has been a huge hit in Europe, largely due to it being a free, ad-supported service that works with multiple platforms. In the U.S., consumers have subscription options like Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio and more, all of which already work with numerous phone platforms including the iPhone.

Rodney Crowell Authors Memoir

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Rodney Crowell will be releasing his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks on January 18. A limited number of signed hard cover copies of Chinaberry Sidewalks are now available for purchase exclusively at RodneyCrowell.com and will ship directly to fans on or before January 18. Also available exclusively on Crowell’s website is a digital download of Rodney Crowell: Acoustic Trio Live, a thirteen-track album that was recorded during Rodney’s recent trio tour with Will Kimbrough and Jenny Scheinman.

A free, three-song sampler of Rodney Crowell: Acoustic Trio Live is available in exchange for signing up for the Rodney Crowell email list. The book is also being sold as part of a bundled package with the digital album and/or VIP Tour Laminate.

Do Twitter Followers Equal Sales?

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Billboard’s Antony Bruno does an excellent job peering under the hood at Soulja Boy’s recent Nov. 30 album release which managed to shift 13,000 units, a surprisingly modest debut considering the artist has 2.5 million Twitter followers. Does this mean that Twitter’s ability to influence and drive sales is becoming less important? What about for other formats like country music?

Bruno notes that Soulja Boy is more of a singles artist than most, however his last album project (2008) sold about 45k first week units. So he asks, “Soujla Boy has 2.5 million Twitter followers, but how many are paying attention? It’s pretty easy to tune out Twitter feeds you’re no longer interested in without going through the trouble of actually dropping the account you’re following.”

“It certainly seems like he did all the right things: compiled a massive Twitter following, kept them engaged with regular posts, and then issued a call to action several times a day with direct access to buy the album,” Bruno continues. “So why the disconnect between 2.5 million people making the effort to follow Soulja Boy on Twitter, but only 13,000 buying the album?”

Unfortunately, finding a solid answer is problematic. Because there are very few country music artists with over 500,000 Twitter followers it’s difficult to draw direct Nashville comparisons with the Soulja Boy parable. However, sales and celebrity do not seem inseparable in the country music arena, either. Billy Ray Cyrus, for example has 507,401 Twitter followers and engages fans with regular, if not prolific updates. Unfortunately, despite a legion of Twitter followers, Cyrus does not have an album listed in the current Top 200. Dolly Parton is the 2nd highest ranked on MusicRow’s country artist Twitter chart with 843,136 followers, but that has not translated into Top Ten CD sales for her either. Then there are artists like Taylor Swift (4.86 million Twitter followers), Kenny Chesney (604,160) and Lady Antebellum (224,556) whose sales continue to place them at the top of the charts despite regardless of having dramatically fewer followers than Soulja Boy.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn it might appear that making the decision to follow or friend someone can be based upon a wide variety factors that may not include purchasing the artist’s music. As marketing guru Seth Godin says, “The problem with browsers is that they rarely buy anything.”

Perhaps the next level of social network marketing will address finding ways to convert lookers to buyers, saying simply, “Quit looking and go buy something already.”

OMG, Email, WRU?

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An article in the New York Times points out the growing divide between communication modes of people young and old. Not surprisingly, those in the younger bracket prefer real-time online chats and text messaging to traditional email. Actual phone calls have been on the decline for some time.

Younger people tend to prefer a more conversational and real-time flow in their digital communication, and therein lies the problem with email. The process of signing in, filling in subject lines, and having to possibly wait hours for a response, is too much formality for the younger demo. Unique visitors to web-based email services like Yahoo and Hotmail are in decline since their peak last year, and only Gmail has seen an increase in use.

According to a related study, there has been a 48% decline among people 12-17 using web-based email services since Nov. 2009. Interestingly, the only demographic groups to show positive growth in use of web email in the same period are ages 55-64 and 65+.

Facebook is trying to address the issue by making its new messaging system more conversational, eliminating the subject line and CC/BCC fields altogether. Gmail has added chat and telephony to its array of services, which might explain some of its continued growth.

Overall it seems to be more of a shift than outright extinction for Email, as the article points out. Business people still rely on Email as the standard of communication in the workplace, and online shopping would be virtually impossible without it.

Country ’10 Sales Fall Short

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Nielsen SoundScan handicappers are now melancholy with the realization that country will not achieve flat sales compared with 2009. With two 2010 sales weeks remaining—one leading into the holiday and one after, your Scribe is predicting that country album sales will total about 42.2 million units a drop of about 6.9% when compared with 2009 and adjusted for 52-week comparison. Overall music industry album sales remain down 13%.

Source: Nielsen SoundScan

The numbers are especially significant when considering that country labels and marketers threw everything they had into the 2010 season. Virtually every superstar and rising star found themselves on the release schedule—Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts, Jason Aldean, Sugarland, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Zac Brown Band, Tim McGraw, The Band Perry, Alan Jackson, Reba, Blake Shelton and more issued new and/or Greatest Hits packages in a mammoth effort to pry open holiday wallets. And it worked—but maybe not as well as one might have hoped. Especially when considering the boost when Taylor’s first week eclipsed expectations hitting the one million unit plus mark.

Speaking about Taylor, how do sales of Speak Now compare with Fearless? Answer: very well. Release to date (RTD) 8 week numbers show Speak Now with 2.607 million and Fearless (1/4/09) with 2.201 million. For the week ending 12/19/2010 Taylor Swift again rises to top all lists with about 259k units. On the country list she was miles in front, but on the all genre Top 200, Susan Boyle, who was No. 1 last week closely followed with over 254k units.

Spunky siblings The Band Perry remain atop the country genre tracks list, shifting over 4j7k additional copies this week of “If I Die Young.” Swift (39+), Chesney (38+), Sugarland (37+) and Aldean (31+) also sold in the over 30k range.

And now some year-end musings…(a good time to go to the kitchen for a snack if you don’t like to face the hard truth..)

[Editorial paragraph] The question waiting in the wings is what will happen in 2011? Will all the same artists be forced to record and release again? Will the fans continue to support all of them? Will the country music industry finally join hands and say, “We want people to pay on the way into the digital store, so we don’t lose sales as they walk out with free goods.” Will Washington politicians make a return Nashville visit with reassuring, but useless talk about how they plan to educate consumers and find new safeguards? What about a stimulus for lost revenues since 2004 when country sold 77.91 million units? Over the past six years country album sales have fallen about 45%. A few more years of similar losses and the industry will be too weak to have its voice heard, labels will be broke and the CMA will be handing out lunch to upper level executives in daily bread lines. Will 2011 be the year that the CMA helps focus discussions on developing a new digital model? Well, readers, if I knew the answer to all these questions, than you could just go on vacation next year and come back after all the hard work was done. [haha]. In the meantime, 2011 seems to offer lots of hope and promise with new companies taking root and older ones adapting and re-establishing themselves.

SoundExchange Reports Record Distributions, New Rates

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SoundExchange reports its distributions to rights holders increased 55% in 2009 to $156 million. Total revenues rose 20% to 204.2 million.

SoundExchange is a non-profit performance rights organization that collects statutory royalties from satellite radio (such as SIRIUS XM), Internet radio (like Pandora), cable TV music channels and similar platforms for streaming sound recordings on behalf of featured and non-featured recording artists, master rights owners (usually record labels), and independent artists who record and own their masters. (Webcaster royalties for publishers and songwriters are collected by performing rights organizations ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.)

The collection of streaming digital royalties is growing rapidly. SoundExchange has said it expects 2010 payments to again jump, over 2009 almost 60%.

One issue for which the collection agency has received criticism has been its total of unpaid royalties. However, this issue seems to have improved in 2009. However, according to the report, as of Dec. 31, 2009 SoundExchange had a balance of $294 million it its unpaid account. To provide greater understanding of the problems this relatively new organization is facing, it provided detailed analysis of these unpaid funds. For example, $88 million was “pipeline” funds in transit and $111 million is “unpayable funds”—$23 million unclaimed by foreign societies, $23 million due to problematic data, $43 million in unclaimed royalties and $22 million of account issues.

Average 2009 payments to SoundExchange’s 5,335 artists and copyright holders increased 57% to artists from $986 to $1,550, and 35% to copyright holders from $7415 to $10,040.

New Rates Approved
The CopyrightRoyalty Board (CRB) recently ruled on new rates for 2011-2015 for non-interactive webcasting services. Currently, CRB commercial rates for 2010 are $0.0019 “per performance” (the rate that is charged per listener, per track)—royalties which are distributed by SoundExchange to the artists and rights owners who helped to create that recording. The new rates that were set for commercial webcasters who are not broadcasters begin at $.0019 per performance in 2011, with gradual increases to $.0023 by 2015. The Copyright Royalty Judges also adopted the “broadcaster” rates that were the subject of SoundExchange’s settlement with the NAB in 2009. Under that settlement, broadcasters’ per-performance rate starts at $.0017 in 2011 and rises to $.0025 by 2015.

“Black Ops” Boasts Explosive Sales

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Perhaps country labels should consider the possibility of making album releases into first person shooter video games.

According to an article in the New York Post, Acitivision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Black Ops game has crossed the $1 billion sales threshold in only 42 days. Though not quite in Avatar territory ($1B in 20 days), this feat easily surpasses the company’s previous smash Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which took 64 days to reach the $1B mark.

To put it another way, Taylor Swift’s Speak Now sold 2.348 million units in the 42 days following its release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This amounts to roughly $25 million or just 2.5% of the Black Ops sales tally. It’s important to note that the game’s hefty $60 retail sticker makes its figures rise very rapidly compared to a $10 music album.

Part of the appeal, in addition to the immersive environment of gaming, is the capability for online play across a number of platforms (Wii, XBox 360, PS3). Since its release, Black Ops users have logged over 600 million hours playing online, creating remote teams for a kind of collaborative social networking.

So while the idea of Taylor Swift toting automatic weaponry is a bit absurd, a towering figure like Trace Adkins could easily fill the role if given a chance. Just a thought…

Garth Tickets on StubHub; Twain Gets Engaged

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Shania Twain is on the cover of the latest issue of US Weekly, as her reps confirmed to the magazine that Twain is engaged to Frederic Thiebaud. Thiebaud is the ex-husband of Twain’s former friend Marie-Anne Thiebaud — the woman Robert “Mutt” Lange, Twain’s husband of 14 years, reportedly left Twain for in May 2008.

On Twain’s official website, she writes: “…I am excited to share some personal news with you;  I’m in love!  Frederic Nicolas Thiebaud has been a true gift to me as a compassionate, understanding friend and over time, an amazing love has blossomed from this precious friendship. Fred and I are happy to announce, our ENGAGEMENT!

Love, peace and happiness is taking me in to 2011 and I’m feeling refreshed and optimistic about the future. I’m looking forward to what the new year has in store and to sharing it with you. So, I’ll be in touch with more news and details soon. Until then, have a fantastic holiday season and I wish you love. Sincerely, Shania”

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Garth Brooks fans still have tonight (12/22) to attend his Nashville Concert to Support Victims of Tennessee Floods at the Bridgestone Arena. While box office tickets sold out right away, a quick look at ticket reseller StubHub.com shows a variety of tickets available for tonight’s 6pm and 9pm shows. Tickets range from $3 and up, with many around the $25-50 range. There are roughly 350 tickets available on StubHub.com for each show.

As previously reported, Brooks sold out all nine concerts—over 140,000 tickets, for $25 (plus $7.50 in fees) with 100% of the proceeds going to the Community Foundation Tennessee Flood Relief. He has raised over 3.5 million dollars for flood victims.

In November, StubHub announced that it would donate its commission from the sales of Brook’s Nashville benefit concert to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

Hough’s Video Banned… Really?

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Who can beat Celebrity Taste-makers when it comes to discerning between the jealous and the zealous? Their snarky wit is discerning and head turning. So when LA Times blog Ministry of Gossip asked the musical question, is Julianne Hough’s new video “Is That So Wrong” deserving of being “kinda banned” by CMT, as the young DWTS starlet told a crowd last week in Maryland and was later reported in the Washington Post, we were intrigued.

The Ministry sums it up thusly…

Of course we had to look, and fortunately the video falls well within the Ministry’s never-super-high standards, so you can check it out too, above. But, for example:
Nobody gets beaten, and nothing gets burned down.
The official video in no way features Miley Cyrus grinding, smoking or dancing like a loon.
It’s not shot in a women’s prison, with performers in scanty underthings — and there’s no mass murder. So — are you scandalized by a beautiful woman dancing in short shorts and a bra that covers up just about everything? Even if she is Ryan Seacrest’s 22-year-old girlfriend?

According to AOL.com, CMT claims they aren’t airing the clip due to “contract negotiation problems.” The issue involves MTV/CMT and VEVO which distributes videos from Universal Music, Hough’s label group.