Grid Talk On The Emerald Seas
Country’s sailor of the emerald seas, Kenny Chesney, pulled into Nielsen SoundScan harbor this week with almost 153,000 debut units in tow (43% digital) and No. 1 positions across both the Country and Top 200 album charts. Great news like that would surely be a reason to pour some Blue Chair Bay Rum to celebrate. Especially when the rum is named after your own label, Blue Chair Records. (KC’s previous release Welcome To The Fishbowl debuted the week ended 6/24/12 with 193k.)
Unfortunately, even the Chesney stimulus was not buoyant enough to keep country sales above water. YTD country album sales dipped from a meager +.4% last week to -.4% this week. Looking back to the same time in 2012, it’s easy to see why the numbers fell. During the week ended 5-6-12 there was a Carrie Underwood debut (Blown Away) with 267k units and Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee in release week 6, at No. 2 logging 64k units. This week’s No. 2 position, behind Chesney, was the affable Blake Shelton also in release week 6, but with a lighter load of about 35k in weekly scans. Therefore the YTD slipped.
But speaking about Shelton, the Voice coach performed a sizzling rendition of “Need You Now” with a very sultry Shakira on last night’s show. The video link is here. Is it my imagination or does Shelton seem to be sweating like crazy? Also send out a full-scale extreme star power alert: watch 16-year-old Danielle Bradbury sing “Maybe It Was Memphis.”
The Randy Rogers Band also jumped in and out of bins this week with Trouble gathering a No. 3 position on the country chart with almost 26k units (62% digital).
Next week anxious fans will receive Lady A’s new Golden, plus Chesney’s wk 2 tally, which will strengthen country’s YTD stats. (Lady A’s last album scored a robust 347k units the week ended 9-18-11.) And there’s more! Watch for a new Pistol Annies and a solo effort form Natalie Maines.
Weekly Register, after a thorough analysis of the upcoming week and exhaustive comparison research now predicts with great certainty, it’s a lock that country YTD sales will float into positive territory next week.
Tracking Our Progress
Chesney’s No. 1 album debut was also reflected, although to a lesser degree, on the tracks chart. The island pirate hoisted six tracks onto the country top 100 with the highest, “Pirate Flag” landing at no. 12 with almost 39k downloads. Eleven notches higher up the chart at No. 1 (again!) is the irrepressible duo named after something you can’t even see, Florida Georgia Line. FGL slugged out another combined 145k downloads of its massive multi-format hit “Cruise.” The song is now blessed with over 3.1 million downloads RTD. Actually the country version of the song registered almost 54k of the 145k this week with the remix featuring Nelly contributing the additional 95k.
Also deserving mention in slots No. 2 and 3 are Darius Rucker “Wagon Wheel” and Blake Shelton w/Pistol Annies “Boys Round Here” which sold 102k and 99k respectively. Rucker’s track is already Platinum and Shelton’s just turned Gold.
Country track sales are up a solid 7.4%, while all genre tracks are off, -2.6%. In actual numbers, YTD 2013 country track sales total 62.1 million units, comparing nicely with last year’s 57.8 million total.
There’s been a lot of great music hitting the streets this spring with more on the way, so make sure you’ve got some wrapped ’round your ears.
In the meantime, keep listening to the ringing of country’s Weekly Register…

Sirius XM Radio recently reported its first quarter profits increased 15% and revenue grew 12% to $897.4 million. Perhaps the best news from the satellite radio provider was an increase in net subscribers of 452,890 from a year ago, giving the company a total of 24.4 million paying customers.
According to a WSJ article, the bullish growth has been driven by used-car buyers who, due to special dealer arrangements, are being offered free trials. Data shows that over 50 million cars in the U.S. are equipped with satellite radios, while only half that number are paying subscribers.
SiriusXM’s good news was tempered by increasing competition from Internet radio offerings such as Pandora and interactive music channels like Spotify. In response to those and other online competitors, Sirius has created its own Internet offerings (extra $3.50 per month) that give listeners the ability to custom design their own channels.
Content providers will soon be immersed in a major slugfest for control of the all-powerful automobile dashboard. This writer, and many observers, now believe that Internet will drive distribution for the new dashboard interface. That means that all parties—terrestrial radio, satellite radio and Internet radio must establish or maintain a strong online presence. (Satellite radio will eventually reap a giant bonus with this strategy if, instead of costly replacement rocket launches, they simply use the Internet for distribution when its lofty sputniks burn out.)
Sirius is especially well positioned for the upcoming battle with five times more paying subscribers than all the other players combined, although its road ahead may require flexibility if indeed it does transition to Internet distribution and face competitive pricing challenges.
The Nitty Grid-y
Seems like only yesterday the Nashville record community was arguing about Warner Music’s unorthodox Blake Shelton sixpak strategy. Would it devalue the music? Did it make the artist seem less important without a full size album? But more importantly, did Shelton’s increased six-pak visibility lead to getting the Voice judgeship which has played a major role in his exploding profile? With Shelton at No. 1 again this week and over 420k albums sold in five weeks, maybe we should send WMGN strategists Peter Strickland and John Esposito a little note saying, “Job well done, guys.”
RCA’s Tate Stevens debuted this week in the No. 4 spot with sales of almost 17k (22.2% digital). Last week’s Casey Donahew Band debut tumbled 72% from No. 7 to No. 26.
Expect a frenzy of register ringing over the next four weeks as we see offerings from Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum, Pistol Annies, George Strait, Trace Adkins and Darius Rucker.
Overall, the week’s tepid country performance caused the YTD gain to slip in half from .9% last week to only .4% gain for the year. All genre music is faring much worse however, down 5.3% YTD.
The sad passing of Mr. George Jones was reflected in an outpouring of love on this week’s country digital tracks chart. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” entered at No. 15 with over 34k downloads followed by “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” (11k), “White Lightning” (7.6k), “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair” (6k), “Finally Friday” (5k), “Choices” (5k) and ”The Grand Tour” (5k). RIP George Jones.
All genre track sales are down 2% YTD, but country track sales are up 7%.
Look for Kenny Chesney launch results next week…

The video streaming business is experiencing similar challenges as the music industry as it struggles become profitable.
Earlier this week Netflix stock careened 24% (+$42.73) in after hours trading as the company announced robust first quarter gains in streaming subscriber growth. As of March 31, Netflix had about 29.2 million subscribers, revenue of $1.02 billion and profits of 5¢ a share. For comparison, HBO’s 2012 year end subscriber count was 28.7 million.
That’s a lot of numbers, but what is the underlying story? Netflix operates on a subscription model much like Pandora and Spotify. For $7.99 a month Netflix customers can stream unlimited content to a variety of screens—HD TV, mobile, tablet or desktop. Unlike Pandora and Spotify, there is no free (ad-supported) service. Another differentiator between the video and music streamers, Netflix is actually producing and creating its own exclusive content. Earlier this year the channel debuted “House Of Cards” which received critical acclaim and boosted subscriptions. Talking about the effect of the mini-series on subscriptions, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told stock analysts “It’s a nice long-term tailwind.” The company plans to spend $5.63 billion over the next few years on original and exclusive content.
Like the music industry, Netflix also has a piracy problem with its consumers and or multiple family members (over) sharing the same log-in. According to a Bloomberg article, Netflix is facing a crossroads where in order to remain profitable and add subscribers they must either raise prices or tighten up sharing rules. Currently two people can watch different programs at the same time using the same subscription. The article quotes former EMI Music Group exec John Rose, now managing director for media, technology at Boston Group Consulting who says, “In general consumers don’t see sharing accounts as theft.” Rose notes consumers have many choices and raising prices, for example creates a risk they will go elsewhere for content. In fact, despite the rosy quarter, stock analysts seem to be quite unsure whether Netflix can actually reach a scale where it can achieve long-term health. Current research shows Netflix customers enjoy 87 minutes of daily streaming per customer. Hastings hopes reaching his goal of 90 million U.S. customers (a 300 percent increase) over two years will help pay for all the content they are purchasing. Will he raise prices, tighten sharing, attract attention with great content or a combination of all three? Or will Netflix get into the music business and offer one subscription for music and video content?
Grid Talk
The sales week ended 4-21-13 had little to distinguish itself. The big ACM bump happened last week, and country mustered just one Top Ten debut this week–Texas troubadors, the Casey Donahew Band who grabbed lucky No. 7 with over 13k (75 percent digital) in sales. I’m not familiar with the CDB, but a quick look at the band’s web site reveals a professionally run organization that any Music City manager would be proud to helm.
Mr. “Voice” Shelton reclaimed the No. 1 Top Country Album position with over 42k units and The Band Perry (37k) moved from No. 4 last week to No. 2. Sales for Brad Paisley’s No. 1 debut last week fell 66 percent to about 34k giving him a two week total of 135k.
Other notable debut releases included Steve Earle and the Dukes (No. 12; 11k); Granger Smith (No. 15; 10k) and Willie Nelson (No. 16; 10k).
Country track sales were off 21 percent w/w but remain ahead of last year by 6.6 percent. Florida Georgia Line continues to ignite the country tracks chart as its combined versions of “Cruise” continue to be the week’s screamin’ stream (No. 1; 129k) . The track is now at 2.85 million downloads and will soon pass three!
Readers may want to click over to MR’s Album Release calendar to take a look at what’s on the way. It looks like another light week and then I’d suggest you fasten your seat belt…