Sales Surge; One Week Remains

/by

santa-claus-fancy-dressSanta’s sold-out annual tour has ended for 2009, but the SoundScan numbers continue on….for one more week that is. That’s right, in a move akin to a leap-year type calendar correction,  the 2009 SS reports will include 53 weeks instead of just 52.

All Genre Sales
Susan Boyle’s debut CD continued to churn, scanning over 510k units in this final Christmas shopping period. Mary J. Blige dropped a new final week release  and reaped 330+k units landing in the No. 2 spot behind Boyle on the Top 200 Albums chart. Nashville’s Swift (224+k) and Underwood (153k) filled out the Top 200 Top 10 at No. 5 and No. 8 respectively. (Handicappers betting on the race between Swift and Boyle for highest selling CD of the year will have to wait one more week. Current stats are Swift 3.157 million, Boyle 2.97 million.) Source: Nielsen SoundScan a division of The Nielsen Company

Country Sales
So how did country fare during Christmas shopping’s final week? Total country album sales equaled 2.28 million units, a 4% gain from the previous week. That register ringing bundle leaves country music albums down 3.1% compared with last year. (All-genre album sales are down 13%.)

The Current Country Top 75 saw Lady Antebellum (84k), Tim McGraw (67k) and Zac Brown Band (62+k) filling out the No. 3, 4 and 5 places after Swift and Underwood, of course. Miranda Lambert’s Revolution is gaining momentum entering the Top 10 at No. 9 (40+k), a 20% gain over the previous week. Lambert’s release has scanned almost 334k units in 13 weeks showing strong career progress. (Her last CD, Crazy Ex Girlfriend took 41 weeks to get to the same total sales position, on 2/10/2008.)

Digital Tracks
On the digital tracks chart Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” continues its reign as the top country track download. This week tracks jumped 125%. Action will again focus on the tracks arena as holiday gift cards and hardware result in an expected track sales surge for the final year-end week. Warner Music’s stocking stuffer strategy seems to be paying off —Blake Shelton’s “Hillbilly Bone” lodged itself at No. 79 with almost 50k downloads making it the Top country track debut of the week.

With one more week added into the mix it appears that country music sales will end the year pretty close to flat, stay tuned for the final wrap….

Ragsdale Debuts Double Disc Set

/by

SuziNashville’s Suzi Ragsdale will release a double digipak album on Feb. 9 titled Best Regards/Less Of The Same. The project is on Clyde/Stark Raven Records and distributed nationally by Allegro Media Group.

RagsdaleThe new tracks feature special guests such as Rodney Crowell, Darrell Scott and Gabe Dixon. Both the new discs were produced by Tim Lauer who describes the work as “showcasing sophisticated arrangements and innovative song textures.”

Ragsdale1Ragsdale released three previous independent albums in collaboration with Verlon Thompson. She also spent time as a member of the Guy Clark Band and in the band of Darrell Scott who produced her first solo album in 1998. The daughter of singer/songwriter Ray Stevens, Ms. Ragsdale was recording children albums and writing her own songs at age 10 and by age 13 was singing demos for other writers. In addition to her music endeavors, the versatile singer/songwriter enjoys cooking and a offers her services as a certified physical fitness and yoga trainer.

Radio promotion for Best Regards/Less of the Same is being handled by Leslie Rouffe of Songlines Music. For bookings, contact Doug Phillips (615) 322-1200. http://www. suziragsdale.com

Piracy Report: 2009s Most Downloaded Films

/by
Star Trek was downloaded on BitTorrent almost 11 million times during 2009.

Star Trek was downloaded on BitTorrent almost 11 million times during 2009.

The music industry is not alone when it comes to fighting the revenue-shrinking effects of piracy. Web analysts www.torrentfreak.com, a site dedicated to creating unique information pertaining to filesharing, has released its list of the Top 10 most pirated movies of 2009.

The site notes that although Internet piracy from the silver screen increased during 2009, the movie industry enjoyed an excess of $10 billion in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales, a new record.

Topping the list with almost 11 million BitTorrent downloads was Star Trek followed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with 10.6 million downloads.

Interestingly, the number of downloads and a film’s worldwide gross revenue do not necessarily correlate. For example, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the No. 7 most downloaded film (7.93 million) but was the highest grossing movie earning over $929 million.

The complete list of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent can be found www.torrentfreak.com

Charlie Daniels Touts GEICO

/by

Click the image to view the GEICO commercial.

Click the image to view the GEICO commercial.

Charlie Daniels will be featured in a GEICO Commercial as part of GEICO’s new ad campaign, called “Rhetorical Questions.” The campaign asks rhetorical questions regarding the well-known tagline, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.”

Each spot begins with an investigative reporter-type host, played by Mike McGlone (from The Brothers McMullen) asking the question: “Could switching to GEICO really save you 15% or more on car insurance?” Answers on the four various ads include “Is Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones too tall?” “Does Charlie Daniels play a mean fiddle?” “Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter R?” or “Did The Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?”

Click here to watch the commercial.

CMT Counts Down Top Videos of ’09 On Host Smith’s Final Show

/by

Swift's "You Belong With Me" video.

Swift's "You Belong With Me" video.

Taylor Swift tops the list when CMT counts down the 20 biggest country music videos of the year in a special year-end episode of CMT Top 20 Countdown on Friday, December 25 at 11:30 a.m., ET/PT. CMT host Lance Smith will count down the best videos of 2009, as well as his favorite moments of the past nine years, on his final episode as host of the series. Smith recently announced that he would be exiting the show at the end of 2009 to pursue a career in acting.

Lance Smith

Lance Smith

Swift’s smash video “You Belong With Me” spent 19 weeks on the countdown this year, and held court at the No. 1 spot for eleven of those weeks in a new Top 20 record.

The Countdown is based on a weekly analysis of CMT.com activity, digital and physical retail sales, radio airplay, other online activity and viewer voting. For the second year in a row, Swift was the most-streamed artist on CMT.com, CMT VOD and CMT Mobile.

CMT’s Top 20 videos of 2009

chart

Publicists Featured On CMA Industry InSite

/by

cma-logoUnderstanding the importance of publicity is the focus of the latest installment of CMA Industry InSite, an online educational series, which is now available on CMA’s member Web site, My.CMAworld.com.

The eighth episode, “Publicity – The Portal to the People,” is available now and features interviews with Mary Hilliard Harrington, President, The Greenroom; Dixie Owen, Sr. Director, Media & Public Relations, Capitol Records Nashville; Wes Vause, Vice President Media, Sony Music Nashville; and Jeff Walker, President, AristoMedia/Marco Music Group.

The series is part of CMA’s ongoing strategic mission of being a resource for the Country Music industry. The Association launched the monthly online educational series in May. The series is an exclusive benefit for members of CMA.

Episodes are posted on the third Monday of the month. With each new episode, CMA members are able to submit questions to the panel of experts. Each segment, which is roughly 10 minutes long, is archived for easy access at any time.

CMT Wraps Most-Watched Year Ever

/by

cmtCMT reports its most-watched year ever during 2009, and its ninth consecutive year of primetime growth. Meanwhile, CMT.com is headed for its most-streamed year in history.

The fourth quarter is on pace to become the network’s most-watched quarter. Viewing is up 43% over last year, which it says was driven by cross-promoting music specials, stunts and new originals across all of CMT’s properties.

Driving rating were the CMT Music Awards, which were the highest-rated telecast of the year. The network also launched new franchises CMT Summer of Music and Big New Music Weekend, featuring nine superstar world premieres and increased music hours; CMT.com streams were up 45% for that weekend. The Singing Bee became the channel’s highest-rated series debut of all time.

The year also included new business ventures for the network, which debuted CMT Radio Live With Cody Alan in January. The network’s first live nightly radio broadcast now boasts 78 affiliates in such top country markets as Nashville, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Denver.

Film-Com Debuts In Nashville

/by

film com

Local organization FilmNashville is hosting the first annual Film-Com event in Nashville next year. Running April 13-16 at the Hilton Nashville Downtown, Film-Com is designed to connect filmmakers and their new projects to distribution companies, financial backers, co-production partners, packaging agents and others in the industry. Organizer Andy vanRoon designed this event to help films find partners before they are complete.

Screenings will be held on the 28th floor of the new Pinnacle Tower at the Bass Berry and Sims offices, where 24 of the most marketable films will be shown to industry executives.

VanRoon, who started FilmNashville, also says a special event with the Nashville Symphony is in the works for Film-Com attendees.

Companies scheduled to attend include:
The Weinstein Company
John Hadity, United Atlantic Capital
The Film Department
Nu Image / Millennium
Newmarket Films
Tom Ortenberg, formerly of Lionsgate and TWC
The Panda Fund [P&A capital]
William Morris Endeavor Global — film packaging
Stone Management — product placement/integration

Books With Songwriter Ties: “Chicken Soup,” “Have Her Over For Dinner”

/by

mattLocal songwriter/artist Matt Moore is branching out with the release of his first cookbook, Have Her Over for Dinner: a gentleman’s guide to classic, simple meals. The Georgia native has shared the stage with Sugarland, Dierks Bentley, and Luke Bryan but has also long enjoyed cooking. His latest outing offers more than 100 recipes—ranging from Italian to Southern Eclectic to Vegetarian—created for men looking to impress in the kitchen. Moore’s recipes emphasize the basics, without requiring dozens of ingredients, and even covers stocking the kitchen, pairing beer or wine with food, lighting, and cleaning up. Available in Nashville at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Green Hills and Lazzaroli Pasta in Historic Germantown. He is having a book-signing at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 7 PM to coincide with Valentines Day.

——————————-

soupMany of Nashville’s hit songwriters are included in the new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind The Song. The latest in the Chicken Soup series was edited by veteran Hollywood publicist Jo-Ann Geffen and features personal stories from Ashley Gorley, Darius Rucker, Chris Dubois, Ray Stevens, Phil Vassar, Pam Tillis, Bob DiPiero, Clint Black, Kim Carnes, Larry Gatlin, Jewel, Janis Ian, Tracy Lawrence, Shelby Lynne, and Richard Marx. The foreword is by Motown sound architect Lamont Dozier. Also included are pop hitmakers Christina Aguilera, Melissa Etheridge, Richie Sambora, John Legend, Daryl Hall and John Oates, Barry Manilow, Diane Warren and numerous others.

Booming Movie Biz Headed For Biggest Year Yet

/by
Chart from TheWrap.com

Chart from TheWrap.com

Hollywood is on track for its biggest year ever. TheWrap.com reports that domestic box office receipts will zoom past the $10 billion mark for the first time in history by the end of 2010. It’s surprising news considering the recession and the fact that there were almost 20 percent fewer films released in 2009 than in 2008.

Working in the film industry’s favor in 2009 is an increase in ticket prices and an increase in ticket sales. The average ticket price was up 4.2 percent to about $7.48 this year, pushed upward by numerous 3D movie releases which demand a higher cost per ticket. Also boosting the box office were popular franchises and sequels. And some Hollywood leaders believe that the recession helped, not hurt.

The economic downturn also effected the number of movies released this year, with some executives telling TheWrap that it created a barrier to entry for smaller indies and that major studios exercised more discretion.

With three full weekends left in 2009, total domestic theatrical distribution revenue stands at $9.64 billion [Exhibitor Relations], besting the previous full-year record of $9.621 billion set in 2007. Big releases still to come include The Princess and the Frog, Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel and Sherlock Holmes. Exhibitor Relations predicts the year-end total will rise to $10.3 billion, while Hollywood.com estimates $10.6 billion.