AFTRA Praises LimeWire Settlement, Requests Info From Labels

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The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFL-CIO, a union of over 70,000 music industry members, praised the recent $105 million copyright infringement settlement awarded to the record labels against LimeWire and CEO Mark Gorton.
The union has also requested information from each of the major labels and subsidiaries involved, with the aim of securing a fair and appropriate share of the settlement to AFTRA recording and non-royalty artists in accordance with the union’s agreement with the labels.
“As the exclusive collective bargaining representative and voice of recording artists, AFTRA applauds this landmark settlement which awards our members their fair share of the monies they are owed as a result of LimeWire’s infringement of our members’ copyrighted works,” says Randall Himes, AFTRA Assistant National Executive Director for Sound Recordings. “AFTRA is moving quickly and aggressively to ensure that the settlement monies are apportioned fairly and disbursed timely to ensure that all artists, including AFTRA members get their rightful share.”
Specifics of the label agreement aren’t provided, but the 2010 winter edition of AFTRA Magazine claims that 90 percent of members’ earnings are tied to physical and digital sales.

Country Stars On "Forbes'" Celebrity 100

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Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw and Toby Keith all scored slots on Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 power list. The ranking of musicians, actors, television personalities, athletes and other fabulons takes into account press coverage, social media, and earnings during the previous 12 months.

Source: Forbes


Proving the power of social media, Lady Gaga takes the No. 1 spot, driven by an enormous number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans.
Social media influence and an estimated net income of $45 million helped propel Swift to number seven.
Brad Paisley ranked No. 48 ($40 million), followed by Toby Keith at No. 51 ($50 million) and Tim McGraw at No. 61 ($35 million).
The earnings consist of pretax income between May 1, 2010, and May 1, 2011. Management, agent and attorney fees are not deducted. Forbes has been publishing the list annually since 1999.
More here.
 

ReThinking Track Equivalent Albums

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The TEA concept creates a way to compare album and track sales in an apples to apples approach. This is especially helpful because the music marketplace has been rapidly evolving. But is the current 10 tracks = 1 album the best way to accomplish this task?
Nielsen SoundScan recently announced that 2011 vs. 2010 music sales are showing a 1.6% increase through 5/8/2011. Good sales news has been in short supply for the music industry, making the release especially newsworthy. The number was calculated by combining physical and digital album sales plus track equivalent albums (TEA).
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According to Nielsen SoundScan Data (through 5/8/2011):
Total Albums w/TEA          +1.6%
Overall Albums       -1.5%
Physical Albums      -8.3%
Digital Albums         +16.8%
Digital Tracks           +9.6%
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The actual number of tracks per album, however varies widely. For example, Jason Aldean’s latest chart topping hit album has 15 tracks. Katy Perry’s CD has 12 cuts plus there is a 17 cut deluxe version. Adele’s blockbuster album has 12 cuts. Then we also have six paks and eight paks. Regardless of the number of cuts an album contains, each time it’s scanned it counts as one unit.
Not surprisingly, rebalancing the equation could result in big swings. Looking at SoundScan numbers in the table below, using 11 tracks=1 album in 2011 would add 42 million equivalent albums compared with 46.3 million using 10 tracks=1 album.

Solutions?
Could this TEA process be improved? One way to sharpen the tabulations might be to calculate each album’s “TEA rate” based upon the number of cuts it contains. So for example Jason Aldean would have to sell 15 tracks from his current album to add an additional TEA unit to that album. And John Rich, who is releasing a new six pak this week would need only six downloads of any of the tracks contained on this new release to get a TEA unit credit. SoundScan is all about units—not dollars—so although this might seem unfair to artists with a higher number of cuts on an album, in reality it simply applies a constant yardstick across album and track purchases.
But what about the financial side of these transactions? Is it possible to compare pricing, margins and profitability across album and track sales for retail and wholesale? The degree of difficulty here is high. The additional burden of offsetting marketing, distribution and manufacturing costs, makes this method highly complex.
However, giving each downloaded track an individual TEA sales equation based upon the number of cuts available on the album from which the cut was released, seems both doable and more accurate.
What are your thoughts? Do you have another solution?


Eye On Idol (5/13/11)

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Well, that was a surprise, wasn’t it?
I feel confident saying that very few people saw last night’s (5/12) American Idol elimination of James Durbin coming. Especially not James. He gave typically splendid performances of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and Leiber/Stoller’s “Love Potion No. 9” on Wednesday (5/11) that were roundly praised by the judges, adding to his incredible season-long momentum.
In fact, he was the only one of the remaining four this week who hadn’t been in the bottom vote-getters a single time. I figured he would sail right on to the finale, scoop up a record deal regardless if he won or lost and carve out a decent career playing his endearing brand of pop metal. And maybe he still will–he’ll just get to do it a little sooner than expected.
But that’s been one of the exciting things about this season of Idol: it’s anything but predictable. People who I figured would last deep into the competition have exited very early (Pia Toscano), and people who I swore would be toast early on have proven themselves to be worthy competitors (Hayley Reinhart).
That means the final three are Hayley, Scotty McCreery, and Lauren Alaina, which all but guarantees a country singer the win.
Follow me on this one: both Scotty and Lauren are undoubtedly Nashville-bound after the show. There’s the possibility that we end up with an all-country finale, and I’ll hazard a guess that Scotty would come out victorious in that matchup. Either way, it’s a win for Nashville. Maybe we even get a feisty “Jackson” style duet out of the deal.
But here’s the more likely reality show scenario. There’s a good chance Scotty and Lauren are currently splitting the country vote, which actually might give Hayley the edge to beat one of them and get into the finale. At which point all the country voters will put their differences aside and rally around whoever is left, completely obliterating Hayley.
In theory, anyway. There’s still a chance I may have to eat my words two weeks from now.

Colt Ford Has Career-High Debut Week

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Colt Ford scored the highest first-week sales of his career when Every Chance I Get entered the Billboard Country Albums chart at No. 3, making it the highest Country debut of the week. The release by Average Joe’s sold 19,145 units, including 21% digital.
Ford’s third studio project was co-produced by Shannon Houchins and Jayson Chance, and features the current single “Country Thang.” Guests on the album include Tim McGraw, Eric Church, Luke Bryan, and Charlie Daniels.
Ford’s collective paid digital downloads are now well over 1 million units. Across all titles, Ford’s albums have sold over 500,000 copies.
Average Joe’s currently has five titles residing in the Billboard Top 75 including Ford’s Every Chance I Get and Chicken And Biscuits, Brantley Gilbert’s Halfway To Heaven, Mud Digger (Various Artists), and The Lac’s Country Boy’s Paradise.

Colt Ford recently performed to a sold-out audience at The Machine Shop in Flint, Michigan and was joined onstage by Kid Rock to perform Rock's tune "All Summer Long" and Bob Seger's "Mainstreet." Photo: Jeff Mintline, MINTYPICS

Luke Bryan Reveals New Album

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Luke Bryan used the power of social media to announce his new album Tailgates & Tanlines, which is due out August 9. During a live stream on his Facebook page, Bryan revealed the album’s title and played two songs live including “Drunk On You” and “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.”
Produced by Jeff Stevens, Tailgates & Tanlines is Bryan’s third studio album for Capitol Nashville and features his current single “Country Girl (Shake It For Me).” The song had a digital sales debut of 105k during its release week, a career high for Bryan.
“I’m so excited to be giving my fans new music!” says Bryan. “Writing and recording this project has been a blast. I feel like I continue to grow in my artistry and I hope that feeling never goes away. Being out there on the road so much and seeing what the fans want make it much clearer for me to know what to give them. I hope they are as excited to hear it as I am to know what they think!”
Bryan is currently nominated for two 2011 CMT Music Awards, and he’ll be on the road with Tim McGraw’s Emotional Traffic tour this summer.

Comparing 2011 Sales With 2010

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Table includes albums with 25 or less wks on the chart and with sales over 175,000 units.Data Source: Nielsen SoundScan (Wk. ended 1/2/2011)


It’s only May, but the question is starting to arise, “How will 2011 country album sales compare with the previous year?”
In the words of Nashville’s elected Criminal Court Clerk David Torrence, “It is what it is…” The true answer, of course depends upon many factors.
First we need to look at the upcoming releases planned for 2011. Secondly it would be wise to ask, where are we now? And finally, we must study last year’s successful albums. The present year’s new releases will need to match or exceed 2010 to stay even or improve.
(1.) As of the week ended 5-8-11 country finds itself down 8.5%, approximately 1.2 million album units behind this same time last year. This has been due largely to last year’s highly successful first quarter Lady Antebellum release which has not been matched this year.
(2.) Your Scribe hears unofficially about releases expected later this year from hit artists such as Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum, George Strait, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and more that will surely be announced. But the list is still pretty short when compared with the 18 titles on our 2010 table. New artists can break out unexpectedly, but experienced bin stuffers can also sometimes underperform.
(3.) Last year’s story is easy to decipher. The graph above shows 18 current 2nd half year releases that at the end of 2010 (week ended 1/2/2011) had been on the chart for 25 weeks or less. They also must have sold 175,000 units or more. We didn’t note holiday CDs since they return each year with the frozen temps. Together these 18 albums were responsible for almost 9.23 million units or about 21% of the total 2010 country album sales. Consider them as the “bar” for 2011. (Note that Lady Antebellum’s 2010 release which earned 3 million units isn’t included in the table, since we are dealing with 3rd/4th quarter releases. We already know the results from the first half year—down 8.5%.)
Eyeing the Future
One question to ask is, will we have a new Taylor Swift album? That will make a huge difference considering the singer/songwriter’s 2010 release shifted almost 3 million units. Dividing the 9.23 million units by 18 albums, calculates to average sales per album of 515,000 units. (In reality, only one third of the 18 titles shown achieved this Gold status.) If we take Ms. Swift’s considerable units out of the mix then we get 17 albums sharing 6.3 million units or a more modest 371,000 units each. So one must ask, “Do we expect to launch 17 new releases in the last half of 2011 that can each sell at least 371k?” That is far from a slam dunk.
Looking at the bright side, there is also a real possibility that an unexpected artist will catch fire and burn up the sales charts. In the meantime, “It is what it is.”

Facebook Serves More Ads Than Any Other Website

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Facebook serves about twice as many advertisements as the next leading website according to the latest news from ComScore. In the last 15 months, Facebook served 1.37 trillion ads, more than double Yahoo, which pushed out 641.89 billion ads to come in second place.
ComScore reports that nearly 1.11 trillion display ads were delivered to U.S. Internet users during the first quarter of 2011. Facebook accounted for nearly one third of these. See the full ComScore report.
AdAge points out, “What really sets Facebook apart…is that it’s actually increased the amount of ads it’s serving per page over the past year while everybody else, from Yahoo and Google to AOL and Microsoft, has either leveled off the number of ads or stayed flat.” Facebook accounted for 346 billion impressions in Q1 2011, nearly double the number it delivered in Q1 2010. Read more and see graphs from AdAge here.
Facebook is also experimenting with new kinds of advertising. According to AdAge, users can now earn “credits” for watching video ads on the site. These ads are shown during games, or on the right-hand side of a very limited number of Facebook pages. The credits are a virtual currency used to buy virtual goods in many games and apps on the Facebook platform.
In more news from Facebook, Myspace Music users can now transfer content from their Myspace artist pages onto Facebook. It will show up on Facebook under a new “Music” tab. More here.

Eye On Idol (5/6/11)

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Jacob Lusk’s American Idol journey has come to an end after the last night’s (5/5) results show.
Chalk it up to his first-round performance on Wednesday (5/4). Contestants sang two songs that night, one current song and one from their parents’ generation in the next round.
Jacob’s first-round choice of the Jordin Sparks/Chris Brown duet “No Air” proved to be a major misstep. The lightweight pop hit was a bad fit for his soulful style, and he struggled with his pitch as he attempted to compensate for both singers’ parts. Even an impassioned rendition of the evergreen “Love Hurts” later in the show couldn’t redeem him following that.
Haley Reinhart could really mess things up for the heavily-favored Lauren Alaina, James Durbin or Scotty McCreery. She’s come on like gangbusters in recent weeks and won over lots of voters despite her rough start to the season. After a super performance night Wednesday (5/4) that included unreleased Lady Gaga tune “You And I” and the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” she was safe and it was Lauren’s turn in the bottom two with Jacob.
Lauren obviously didn’t take the news so well, and busted out in tears. Right now Haley has the momentum, so Lauren will have to bring something jaw-dropping to hang around for another week.
Barring something really extraordinary, I imagine that we’re going to see another all-male finale between Scotty and James. They’ve been the most consistently strong all season, and yet still manage to show something new every week.
James’ emotionally naked delivery of Nilsson’s “Without You” likely struck a chord with many viewers. He has a keen ability to break down those barriers between singer and audience, and that’s one more reason he’s going to be very tough to beat.
But Scotty could do it, especially if he stretches himself like he did on Wednesday. He stepped out of his comfort zone and worked the stage Garth-style with Montgomery Gentry’s “Gone,” marking an exciting departure from his more intimate and subdued style.
Win, lose, or draw, I suspect we’ll see both Scotty and Lauren making the rounds in Nashville after the show is over.

Jewell Launches Jewell Entertainment

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Genevieve Jewell has launched Jewell Entertainment, a full-service artist management and marketing company, in Nashville. Jewell will be working with artists and companies of all genres of music.
One of the company’s initial management clients is guitar prodigy Tyler Bryant, whose story is featured in the recent documentary Rock Prophecies. Bryant is currently on tour with Jeff Beck and will soon be going into the studio to record his first full-length album.
Jewell was most recently with Borman Entertainment, where she worked with Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Michael Franti and Alison Krauss among others. Prior to that she worked with Nettwerk Management.
“During my time at Borman, I worked with some of the world’s most talented artists and many of the most dynamic people in the business,” said Jewell. “I couldn’t be more excited to put that experience to work with this exciting new venture.”
Reach Jewell at [email protected] or 603-770-3376.