Tracks Push Country Album Sales Positive

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This year is the first time we have a complete 12-month country digital track sales report from Nielsen SoundScan, and we are excited!
The 2010 Top 200 country tracks shows a total of 57.68 million purchased. For added track perspective, we divide the total Top 200 sales by 10 to get a metric called “track equivalent album” or TEA. Obviously a TEA is not identical to regular album purchase. Based upon this year’s track sales, we added an additional 5.77 million TEA album purchases to country’s 43.7 million albums reported by Nielsen SoundScan boosting album sales to a 7.2% increase over 2009. (Comparing albums to albums, country sales fell about 5.2%.) But unfortunately, digital tracks and albums are not equal in terms of margin and profitability.
Just like in touring and album sales, country artists do not participate equally in the upper reaches of the tracks chart. The industry tells a tale of haves and have-nots. For example, the Top 20 selling digital tracks totaled 35% of the entire 200 songs listed. Further narrowing the curve, only thirteen artists were involved in selling the Top 20 tracks. [see list]
Top Selling Country Digital Tracks Songs 2010
(Source: Nielsen SoundScan)
1. LADY ANTEBELLUM /NEED YOU NOW
2. SWIFT*TAYLOR/MINE
3. SUGARLAND/STUCK LIKE GLUE
4. BAND PERRY*THE /IF I DIE YOUNG
5. SWIFT*TAYLOR/ TODAY WAS A FAIRYTALE
6. JARON AND TLRTL/PRAY FOR YOU
7. LAMBERT*MIRANDA/THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME
8. UNDERWOOD*CARRIE /UNDO IT
9. LADY ANTEBELLUM/AMERICAN HONEY
10. SWIFT*TAYLOR/ YOU BELONG WITH ME
11. NIEMANN*JERROD/LOVER, LOVER
12. SWIFT*TAYLOR/BACK TO DECEMBER
13. BROWN*ZAC BAND/FREE
14. BROWN*ZAC BAND/CHICKEN FRIED
15. BRYAN*LUKE RAIN IS A GOOD THING
16. BROWN*ZAC BAND/TOES
17. UNDERWOOD*CARRIE /COWBOY CASANOVA
18. ATKINS*RODNEY /FARMER’S DAUGHTER
19. BRICE*LEE/ LOVE LIKE CRAZY
20. ALDEAN*JASON /MY KINDA PARTY
Top Selling Track Artists (% of Top 200 total tracks)
(Source: Nielsen SoundScan)
1. SWIFT*TAYLOR/14.85%
2. LADY ANTEBELLUM/9.08%
3. UNDERWOOD*CARRIE/5.72%
4. BROWN*ZAC BAND/4.93%
5. ALDEAN*JASON/4.11%
6. LAMBERT*MIRANDA/3.49%
7. SUGARLAND /3.33%
8. BAND PERRY*THE /2.65%

Who Wins the 2010 Current Country Album Sales Sweepstakes?

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Swift or Lady A? Capitol Nashville or Big Machine?

There are so many ways to dissect the year’s sales events. But one important measurement of popularity is tied to current album sales. This is not to say that catalog sales are not an important revenue stream, but, according to Nielsen SoundScan, 58% of all album purchases in 2010 were current product.
The current country album sales top 200 included sales of 24.8 million units or 56% of all country sales, a reliable sample that matches well with the overall all-genre current percentage. (Source: Nielsen SoundScan YTD Current Country Albums; Wk. ending 1/02/2011)
Artist Sweepstakes
1. Taylor Swift 15.52%
2. Lady A 15.51%
3. Zac Brown Band 7.36%
The Top 200 data shows a virtual draw between Taylor Swift and Lady A, with respect to total current sales during 2010— with each artist selling a total of about 3.84 million album units. (Swift actually beat Lady A by about 1,000 units or a tiny .01%)
Lady A’s Top 200 titles included an iTunes Session and a Christmas special plus the trio’s two albums. Swift logged her units solely from Speak Now and Fearless. Lady A however, had the highest selling album—Need You Now—which passed the 3 million mark. Swift, whose CD debuted much later in the year almost caught the Trio, but was No. 2 in this metric with 2.96 million. (Recent sales levels assure it won’t be long before sales of Speak Now pass Need You Now.)
The third largest selling act was Zac Brown Band with 1.82 million units, earned from five different projects.
Lonely At The Top
The sales gap between country’s have and have-nots continues to widen. Swift, Lady A and ZBB for example account for almost 38.5% of the Top 200 current total units. A phenomenally high weighting.
How many individual current albums sold Gold (over 500,000 units) or higher? Eleven. Taylor and ZBB each got two of the eleven spots. The remaining 7 were earned by Lady A, Sugarland, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and Rascal Flatts.
By Label
1. Capitol Nashville 22.66%
2. Big Machine 17.78%
3. Atlantic 7.77%
4. Arista Nashville 6.97%
When tallying the current country album share by label, Capitol Nashville zooms to the top of the list by a comfortable margin with 22.66% of the total 24.8 million current units or 5.62 million. Capitol Nashville’s strong roster this past year included Lady A, Keith Urban, Darius Rucker, Luke Bryan and more. Big Machine followed with 17.78% share or 4.41 million with Ms. Swift and Rascal Flatts doing the heavy lifting in the checkout lines. Big Machine’s mid-year Flatts signing proved quite strategic since the album shifted over 545k units.
Atlantic cultivated its ZBB franchise to get third place with 7.77% or 1.93 million units. Arista Nashville took fourth with 6.97% or 1.73 million units, courtesy of efforts from Carrie Underwood, Alan Jackson, newcomer Jerrod Niemann and stalwart Brad Paisley.
Summary
Who were 2010s hottest selling acts in country music? Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Zac Brown Band.
Note: Albums on the chart for up to 18 months are deemed current by SoundScan. They can remain current after 18 weeks for two reasons: having a current radio single or selling in the upper half of the chart.

Verizon To Sell Apple's iPhone

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iPhone lovers, rejoice. After what seems like years of speculation, the beloved Apple Inc. smartphone will finally be unshackled from the oppressive tyranny of AT&T and available for use through the Verizon Wireless network. Viva la revolucion!
Verizon’s version of the iPhone 4 will be available for purchase Feb. 10, with the 16 GB version retailing for $199.99 and the 32 GB edition going for $299.99. A special Verizon-only feature will allow the phone to serve as a mobile hotspot connecting up to five devices. No information has been released on the cost of data plans, but tuaw.com reports that Verizon’s Android phones have the mobile hotspot capability for $20/month on top of the $30/month unlimited data plan. Apple originally released iPhone 4 for sale through AT&T in June 2010.
This development will likely allow Verizon to siphon significant business from AT&T, whose exclusive contract with Apple to carry the iPhone has been a major competitive advantage. And with Verizon’s network being the nation’s largest, Apple stands to reap great rewards from tapping its massive customer base.
So this begs the question: who will be making the switch?

CMA Grows Strategic Partnership Department

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The Country Music Association has hired Chris Epperly as Director of Strategic Partnerships, and Angela Mendenhall as Manager of Strategic Partnerships. Sheri Warnke, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, made today’s (1/6) announcement.
In the newly-created position of CMA Director of Strategic Partnerships, Chris Epperly will promote the Country Music format to companies and brands, develop marketing and promotional resources, and spearhead partnership development. With more than 10 years of related experience, he was previously VP, Brand Manager at North Carolina brand identity and advertising company Mirrus, Inc. Prior to that Epperly worked as Senior Manager at live entertainment company JHE Production Group, handling sponsorship and partnership revenues.
Returning full-time to CMA, Angela Mendenhall will develop and maintain strategic partnerships for all CMA assets, including CMA Music Festival, CMA Awards, and CMA Songwriter Series. Mendenhall joined CMA in 2005 as a Regional Partnership Manager, and was promoted to National Partnership Manager a year later. During a reorganization of the department, she became an independent contractor for CMA in 2009.
Mendenhall developed CMA’s long-standing relationship with Durango Boots, the 2008-2010 title partner of CMA Music Festival’s Acoustic Corner at Fan Fair® Hall as well as a CMA Awards promotional partner. She managed and built special programs for partners including Blue Bell Creameries, CMT, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Field and Stream, GAC, McDonalds, Microsoft, RFD-TV, Sony PlayStation, and Wrangler. She also created and brought a variety of special events to CMA Music Festival including the Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge (2008-2010), CMA Celebrity Cook Off (2009), CMA Music Festival BBQ Championship (2009), and the K9 Ultimate Sports Show (2007-2010).

2010 Sales Wrap; Top Albums, Artists and Songs

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In the year’s top selling digital song, “California Gurls” Snoop Dog says, “Katy I’m all up on ya, cause you’re representing California.” This writer says to Taylor, Lady A, Ke$ha and ZBB, “To brag I’m not bashful, cause you’re cranking it loud for Nashville.”
OK, with lines like that, perhaps this writer’s rap career will remain a well kept secret. But Nielsen SoundScan’s Year-End U.S. shows that Nashville music did not play second fiddle in 2010. Below we will note the year’s Top Artists, Albums and Digital Tracks plus mention the Top country Artists of the SoundScan era (1991-1/02/2011). All the lists below are Top 10.
Albums
Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now (No. 2; 3.089 million units) and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now (No. 3; 2.96 million) finished behind the year’s top sales album—Eminem’s Recovery (No. 1; 3.415 mm). Ke$ha, also with Nashville roots, earned the No. 10 spot on the Top Ten list with sales of 1.143 million for her debut Animal. Country earned 30% of the units on the all genre Top Ten Selling albums. (Including Ke$ha, Nashville earned 35%.)
Looking at the digital component of the above album sales, Eminem, Taylor, Ke$ha and Lady A were the Top 4 in that order.
Artists
Taylor Swift gently moved Em down a notch for the overall Top Selling Artist stats. Swift’s 4.47 million units placed her ahead of Eminem’s 4.317 million. Lady A followed in third place with combined sales of 3.848 million. And congrats to Zac Brown Band who shifted 1.824 million units for a No. 9 position on the Top 10.
Looking at Nashville’s contribution to the Top Ten selling artists of the SoundScan era we find Garth Brooks in the No. 1 spot with 68.513 million units, George Strait at No. 6 (42.396 million), Tim McGraw (No. 8; 39.396 million) and Alan Jackson (No. 9; 38.275). With album sales declining, the members of this club are unlikely to greatly change. For example, Eminem, currently at No. 7 on this exalted list (39.643 million total) sold 3.4 million units this year. At that rate it would take almost 9 years to catch Garth Brooks—assuming Mr. Brooks’ total doesn’t grow.
Songs
As discussed in 2010 Sales Wrap: Country Slide, there is a digital gap between country consumers and the average of all music consumers, with respect to buying digital albums. This “divide” also applies to tracks, and as a result only one lone country song shows up on the year’s Top Ten Digital Songs list. Congrats to Lady A and “Need You Now” which downloaded a total 3.182 million units to gain the No. 10 spot and be named Top Digital Country Song. Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” featuring Snoop Dog topped the list with 4.398 million units.
Looking at the Top Selling Digital Songs for the entire SoundScan era (7/04/2004-1/02/2011) Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” rides No. 6 with 5.483 million downloads and Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” is No. 10 with 4.853 million.
Summary
Tracking and charting annual unit counts, while important to navigating our industry, is not the entire story. Profits are much harder to document. Over the past few years we have seen CD list prices and sale prices drop while marketing and other costs increased. This adversely effects margins and profits. However, offsetting the bad news, track prices have gone up at iTunes and as the percentage of digital albums grows, there should be cost savings realized since there is no physical product involved.
Added Nielsen SoundScan Factoids
Lady Antebellum
—Finishes the year as the biggest selling group of 2010 with more than 3.8 million album sales.
—Need You Now album finishes the year as the top selling physical album with 2.7 million sales.
—Song “Need You Now”  is the most played song of the year with 600,000 spins over the airways.
Taylor Swift
—For the second time in three years is the biggest selling artist for 2010 with more than 4.4 million album sales.
—If it wasn’t for the passing of Michael Jackson in 2009, Swift would have been the best selling artist for three consecutive years; she came in second behind Michael in 2009 with 4.6 million album sales and was the best selling artist in 2008.
—Has sold more than 4 million album sales for three consecutive years; the only artist to sell 4+ million albums each of the last three years.
—Speak Now in the best selling Internet album in 2010 with 185,000 sales.
—Ends the year as the most played artist over the airways in 2010 with more than 1.1 million spins; edging out  Lady Antebellum, by 1,000 spins.

Study Compares Industry Perception With Fan Results

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Country Radio Broadcasters, Inc.® and the Country Music Association have partnered to present a unique research project at CRS 2011, which tracks new media usage by country fans, as well as music executives’ perception of that usage.
The study dissects the awareness, interest in and usage of new media devices, social media, smartphone applications and radio station and artist websites in the country consumer’s daily life. It also polls participants on topics including music consumption, interaction with and purchase of music via new media outlets, radio listening versus television and Internet usage, and adoption trends of services such as Netflix, Skype and standard texting.
“I think one of the most interesting things about this year’s study is that it’s going to poll people within our industry, not just fans and radio listeners,” said Rusty Walker, president of Rusty Walker Programming. “It will be interesting to see how accurate we are in predicting the popularity of new media in the daily lives of our listeners. I’m betting there will be some surprises there.”
The study, conducted by Coleman Insights, covers a cross-section of 18- to 54-year-old country radio listeners who will be polled via online interviews. A significant sample of industry professionals including programmers, managers, and artists will be contacted as well. Surveying begins this month to ensure the most current findings.
The results will be presented Thursday, March 3, 2011, at 11 a.m. in the Nashville Convention Center. CRS 2011 runs March 2-4, 2011. The $499 regular registration rate is available at www.CRB.org or through the Country Radio Broadcasters offices at (615) 327-4487.

Awards Show Changes Boost Viewers, Ad Rates

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Awards show changes designed to boost ratings seem to be paying off in terms of ad revenue. The ACM has added fan voting over the last few years in order to encourage participation which leads to viewership on the big night.
Last year, the Oscars attracted a bigger audience by expanding the Best Picture category, which allowed for more blockbusters to be eligible for the night’s top honor. The move yielded an average audience of 41.3 million viewers, an increase from 2008’s low of 32 million.
Heading into the Feb. 27, 2011 Academy Awards, ABC is increasing ad rates for its broadcast for the first time in three years. AdAge reports a 30-second spot on the show in going for about $1.7 million, up from the 2009 and 2010 cost of $1.3 – $1.5 million.
The publication says that major, live TV events like awards shows are becoming increasingly attractive to advertisers in the face of audience fragmentation due to mobile devices, online viewing, etc.
The Oscars typically follow only the Super Bowl and NFL championship games for top annual TV ratings.

2010 Sales Wrap: Country Slide Continues

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Today is an especially robust data day for Nielsen SoundScan watchers since the week ending 1/2/2011 closes the door on 2010. Pundits will continue squeezing out details over the next few weeks in an effort to fully understand the past and perhaps peer into what lies ahead, but simply stated the industry overall continued its decline, with CD sales (both physical and digital) dropping 12.8% compared with 2009. Country CD sales for the same period fell a kinder, gentler 5.2% affording the format a slightly stronger market share of total CD sales— 13.4%—up from last year’s 12.3%. (As the album sales graph shows, country CD sales have plummeted almost 50% since this decade’s highpoint in 2004.)

Keeping this year’s decline in the 5% range required a massive fourth quarter full court press on the consumer. (As late as 9/5/10 country was behind 13.2%.) The ten Top Selling Q4 Country CD releases shown in the colorful graph [above] show how much superstar product was launched into the marketplace. The Sales Percent graph [top] shows how the numbers (and consumers) responded. Six artists were able to shift more than a half million units each in the 15 week (or less) holiday season leading to year end. Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now also must be mentioned. Although the trio debuted 49 weeks earlier this year and therefore didn’t make our Q4 chart, they racked up 3.09 million units YTD.
Taylor Swift’s spotlight continued to shine brightly this year, eclipsing all but a very few other artists worldwide. Her 1.05 million unit Speak Now debut week (10/31) exploded and she ended the year selling just shy of 3 million units over a 10 week period. The colorful Q4 graph tells the tale and explains why the young singer/songwriter continues to reap large editorial coverage.
As we wonder about 2011, insiders project that retail shelf space will continue to shrink, and marketers will therefore continue to place a premium on prospecting for new sales opportunities.
In 2010 country digital album sales grew to about 15% of the total up from 11% in 2009. However, all genre digital album purchases equal 26% (up from about 20% last year). This 15/26 gap shows that country consumers still have a lot of catching up to do as they travel toward the digital frontier. However, with the amazingly rapid integration of smartphones, tablets and more, 2011 may well be the year that country’s fans narrow the format’s “technology gap.”

Facebook Worth $50 Billion

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Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies in a deal which values the social networking company at $50 billion. According to this latest figure, Facebook is worth more than eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner.
With rumors circulating about a 2012 public offering for Facebook, Goldman Sachs is expected to raise $1.5 billion from investors for the company. The New York Times reports that the minimum investment per person would be $2 million.
The cash infusion could be used to hire employees, develop new products, or pursue acquisitions, before Facebook goes public.
The Wall Street Journal compares Facebook’s value to other internet properties in a series of graphs that show Facebook’s position relative to valuation, revenue, users and more. Some additional insights can be found in a store on Mashable.com.

Rockhouse Aligns Live Marketing Channels

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Rockhouse Live has been announced as a new division and proprietary technology platform for technology-based entertainment agency, Rockhouse Partners. the Nashville-based firm’s new offering is intended to help live entertainment properties sell more tickets.
According to Rockhouse, “The new division will act as an entertainment marketing agency and leverage a technology product that includes a turn-key set of tools and services: marketing calendar, website upgrade, email marketing, social media, and reporting. The solution integrates with an existing ticketing provider’s data to provide a seamless view into ticket trends and marketing channel ROI.”
“The industry was lacking a comprehensive digital marketing solution for venues and entertainment properties, so we created one,” said Joe Kustelski, Co-Founder of Rockhouse Partners and head of Rockhouse Live. “Ticketing companies provide some marketing services, in-house resources provide others, data lives all over the place, and it’s hard to hit the right fans with the right message at the right time.”
Rockhouse clients include the Nashville Predators; Churchill Downs; Tennessee State Fair; Delaware State Fair; Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium; State Fair of West Virginia; Next BIG Nashville; and other touring properties.
“Technology is moving fast and it’s difficult for entertainment properties to properly keep up,” adds Tawn Albright, Managing Partner of Rockhouse Partners. “The combination of our technology platform and experience in live entertainment and digital marketing makes for a formidable force at an affordable price. We offer a one-of-a-kind solution for anyone who sells tickets.”