AIMP To Host Social Media Panel in Nashville

AIMP LogoThe Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) will host a discussion on harnessing social media and e-commerce to maximize customer acquisition and revenue. The event will be held at ASCAP’s Nashville office (first floor conference room) on Wednesday, Feb. 20 from 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.
Ariel Hyatt (founder of CyberPR), Wayne Leeloy (Senior Director of Digital Marketing for Warner Music Nashville), Marcus Whitney (CTO of Moontoast) and John Barker (President of Clearbox Rights, LLC) will discuss product development and marketing strategies involving social media and e-commerce. They will also examine the early stages of development with a publisher/administrator who is fostering an audience through social media.
A hot lunch buffet will be served. The cost for AIMP members is $25, while the price for non-members is $40. Those interested in attending can RSVP at www.aimp.org.

Weekly Register: Post Holiday Slowdown

ckWeek two of the new year offered few surprises for Music City sales and no debuts on Nielsen SoundScan’s Top Current Country list. Red (49k) continued to dominate and was the only title to reach over the 20k bar. Labelmates Florida Georgia Line (FGL) stepped up to No. 2 adding 18k scans and TV soundtrack Music of Nashville took the No. 4 position with 16k in sales giving BMLG three out of the week’s Top 4 country albums. Capitol/UMG filled the remaining Top 5 spots with Luke Bryan (No. 3; 16k); and Little Big Town (No. 5; 16k).
The holiday sales bandwagon has subsided as country album sales fell 21% W/W and Top 75 sales barely reached the low water mark of 260k. A quick glance at the Weekly Grid shows the slowdown in graphic terms—YTD country album sales were up 4.8% last week but one week later are mostly flat (+.8%).
weeklygrid1-13-13The start of the year is traditionally slow for music sales since fans are are facing the reality of paying down holiday credit card bills. Still, there were non-country debuts from Chris Tomlin (No. 1; 73k) and Undead Hollywood (No. 2; 53k) that topped the all genre list and kept overall album sales in positive Y/Y territory (+4.1%).
If you are looking for something new from Nashville, you can find it on the Digital Genre Country tracks list. Blake Shelton’s “Sure Be Cool If You Did” debuts at No. 1 with almost 98k downloads. Taylor Swift also debuts a new track, “The Moment I Knew” that took the No. 2 position with sales of 79k. Getting No. 3 honorable mention is FGL with “Cruise” adding another 72k units for an RTD of 1.81 million!!!
weeklygrid1-6-13
Consider This
Watch and see if/how Facebook’s newly introduced Graph Search functionality plays out for the music industry. The beta version of the service, introduced 1/15 by FB CEO Mark Zuckerburg will focus on four main areas—people, photos, places and interests. In many ways the new search system reveals the power of the hive, that is makes it easier to discover likes and dislikes of friends and friends of friends. Will this become a new tool for music discovery? Will artists and labels find ways to “game” the system and make new music more likely to appear? Will Facebook offer these promo serivces for a fee?
With one billion active members, 240 billion photos and trillions of connections, Graph Search could have a profound impact.

Facebook Unveils Graph Search

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Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. Users can create custom views of the results by changing the titles.

Facebook announced a new search tool yesterday (Jan. 16) called Graph Search. Built for use within the extremely popular social site, Graph Search is designed to keep users on Facebook, instead of going to other sites to seek information.

According to Facebook, “With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z”) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but [for privacy reasons] you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.”
At present, Graph Search will mine users’ pictures, likes and check-ins, but not status updates. The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas — people, photos, places, and interests. Open Graph actions (for example, song listens) are not yet available, but could be in coming months.
Examples of searches include: “people from my hometown who like hiking,” “friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park,” “software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing,” “photos of my friends before 1999,” “cities visited by my family,” “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India,” “tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends,” “movies liked by people who like movies I like,” “languages my friends speak,” “strategy games played by friends of my friends,” and “books read by CEOs.”
According to the New York Times, “The search tool is plainly designed with an eye toward profits. If done right, said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner, it could offer marketers a more precise signal of a Web user’s interests. ‘It’s going to lend itself to advertising or other revenue-generating products that better matches what people are looking for,’ he said. ‘Advertisers are going to be able to better target what you’re interested in. It’s a much more meaningful search than keyword search.'”
Graph Search beta is open and only available in English. Click here for more details or to join the waitlist.
In more FB news, the company is testing a pay-to-message service for ordinary people to be able to message celebrities, CEOs, etc. More here.

Weekly Register: The Start Of A New Horse Race

raceThe CDs are in their digital and physical bins and there’s the bell, “We’re Off!!” Yes, it’s the start of another horse race, er, music sales year and Weekly Register remains at your side to chart the highs and lows and call the plays each week—as they happen.
However, after that exciting rave-up intro I have to admit 2013’s first week didn’t generate anything even as exciting [yawn] as news about the $11 million mansion purchased by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West so they’ll have room for a nursery. But I promise we’ll find some relevant facts, so read on…
As our grid shows the first week of 2013 is ahead of the first week of 2012 largely carried by a strong crop of post-holiday Top 5 albums: Les Miserables soundtrack (92k); Mumford & Sons (91k); Taylor Swift (69k); Phillip Phillips (63k) and One Direction (61k).
weeklygrid1-6-13On the country list Swift led by a 3 to 1 margin followed by Carrie Underwood (23k); Florida Georgia Line (FGL) (20k); Jason Aldean (20k) and Luke Bryan (20k). Four out of the country Top 5 this week have scanned platinum or multi-platinum (Swift 3X). (FGL is the exception, but the album is only five weeks old.)
Track sales were off 38% compared with last week’s year-end, gift-card-cashing charts, but up 5% compared with the same week in 2012 (see grid). Frisky FGL topped the Digital Genre Country tracks list as “Cruise” downloaded another 103k units on its double platinum trajectory moving it to 1.738 million. No. 2 on the country tracks list was Swift’s “We Are Never Ever…” which added 96k this week for a total of 3.15 million. Ms. Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” sits at No. 1 on the all-genre Digital Tracks Current list downloading a massive 326k units for 2.367 million RTD. (This track is not also listed on the Digital Genre Country list for an unexplained reason known only to the folks that compile the Nielsen SoundScan data.)
Albums On Deck
MusicRow’s calendar for Upcoming Album releases can be found here. The next two months show dual Tim McGraw releases (Curb and BMLG) and some great projects from Katie Armiger, Randy Houser, Gary Allan, The Mavericks and power vocal trio Blue Sky Riders.
During the first two months of 2012 new offerings from Dierks Bentley, McGraw, Kellie Pickler, Martina McBride plus a soundtrack for Act Of Valor boosted unit totals. This year we have fewer top line titles, but we are blessed with a consistent tonnage title, like Red, so expect year-over-year comparisons for the next two months to remain close, even as digital percentages grow.

The Road Ahead
The new sales frontier—access—or digital streaming lacks a comprehensive measurement yardstick, but indications continue that it is gaining favor with consumers. Muve Music service, bundled by Cricket Communications announced this week that it has over one million subscribers. Muve Music customers get unlimited full track downloads, ringtones and ringback tones all included in their monthly rate plan. Muve has jumped from 600k subscribers to 1.1 million in less than a year. Spotify, an international on-demand music service now boasts five million paid subscribers with one million in the U.S. Rhapsody, another large player in the streaming on-demand market has also grown its paid base to over one million. According to research from digitalmusicnews.com, Muve, Rhapsody and Spotify have enjoyed a 340% paid subscriber growth in the last 13 months.
Pandora, also a key player in the space, is a webcaster service (users can’t pick exactly what they want to hear) with about 1.5 million subscribers.

2012 Music Sales Recap: Country's Cup Runneth Over

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Country placed four artists and five albums on the 2012 best seller lists.


Each year—after the holiday cheer—comes the industry accounting. Time to congratulate the hot sellers of 2012, spot the trends, and balance things like “digital vs. physical,” “albums vs. tracks” and “performance by genre.” Thankfully, Nielsen SoundScan together with Billboard create a detailed year-end report that helps makes this pursuit manageable and was a key source for the following analysis.
Some writers will try to put a positive spin on the year by saying that overall music transactions were up 3.1% to 1.661 billion units sold. But that number really doesn’t tell the story. Overall album sales were off -4.4% (physical was off -13.5%) and Overall Album Sales with TEA, a key metric which includes albums (physical and digital) plus digital track sales was also down -1.8% (Track Equivalent Albums; 10 tracks=1 album).
But although overall purchases lagged, country music was up and the best performer of all the genre categories. Read on…
Digital Landscape
Consumers got more into downloading this year, driving total digital sales up 9% over 2011. Digital albums increased 14.1% and tracks were up 5.1% giving digital a majority 55.9% of the total business for 2012. In fact, 37% of all album purchases were in digital format. (In country music the online tide pushed digital albums up 38% and tracks up 12.8%. However, even with the increases, only 25.3% percent of total country album sales were digital, far lower than the 37% all-genre average.)
By Genre
Yes, overall album purchases slid in 2012, but there were still two genre winners— most noticeably Country which was up 4.2%. Rock was also in positive territory, eking out a 2% gain. Big losers included Jazz (-26.2%), Classical (-20.5%) and Latin (-17.6%).
The Country Hit Parade
Artists: Country music was well represented among 2012’s Top Selling Artists. For example, Taylor Swift (No. 2; 4.062 million), Jason Aldean (No. 6; 1.855 million), Carrie Underwood (No. 9; 1.497 million) and Luke Bryan (No. 10; 1.432 million) placed inside the year’s Top Ten Artists by total album sales. Joining them were Adele (No. 1; 5.167 million), One Direction (No. 3; 2.978 million), Mumford & Sons (No. 4; 2.149 million), Justin Bieber (No. 5; 1.897 million), Whitney Houston (No. 7; 1.789 million) and Maroon 5 (No. 8; 1.54 million).
Albums: Country also owned half of the positions on the Top 10 Selling Albums chart. Gracing the list were No. 2-Taylor Swift, Red; No. 7-Carrie Underwood, Blown Away; No. 8-Luke Bryan, Tailgates & Tanlines; No. 9-Lionel Richie, Tuskegee; and No. 10-Jason Aldean, Night Train. Filling in the gaps were No. 1-Adele, 21; No. 3-One Direction, Up All Night; No. 4-Mumford & Sons, Babel; No. 5-One Direction, Take Me Home; and No. 6-Justin Bieber, Believe. 
Holiday Cheer
Nashville’s three high profile seasonal albums failed to keep pace with frontrunners Rod Stewart (No. 1; 858k) and Michael Buble (No. 2; 622k), but followed closely. Lady Antebellum, On This Winter’s Night (No. 3; 439k); Blake Shelton, Cheers It’s Christmas (No. 4;428k); and Scotty McCreery, Christmas With Scotty (No. 5; 348k) all came close to turning gold.
ref=dp_image_z_0-2And what a thrill to see Little Miss Dynamite, the legendary Brenda Lee come storming in with the Top Selling Song in the Holiday Season (11/5/12-12/30/12)—”Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” (No. 1; 1.775 million units). Yes, during the above mentioned period Lee’s track outsold runner ups Bruno Mars “Locked Out Of Heaven” (No. 2; 1.732 million), PSY “Gangnam Style” (No. 3; 1.462 million) and Taylor Swift “I Knew You Were Trouble” (No. 4; 1.383 million). (Note: “Rockin Around…” was written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958. Marks also wrote “Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer”).
Access—Going With The Flow
Taylor Swift was 2012’s No. 1 Streamed Artist, and the only Nashville alum to make that Top Ten list. (The data for this list is “aggregated from Nielsen BDS streaming data sources including: Akoo, Guvera, Medianet, Rhapsody, Rdio, Slacker, Spotify, Thumbplay, Vevo, Yahoo! and others.” Note that heavyweight Pandoara is absent.)
Cocktail Chatter
• In 2012, 108 songs exceeded the one million sales mark.
Adele’s 21 was the biggest selling album with just over 4.4 million sales, marking the first time an album has been the year’s best seller for two consecutive years. The album has now eclipsed the 10 million unit mark.
• For the second year, Katy Perry was the most played radio artist with over 1.4 million spins.
• For the first time more albums were sold in digital music stores (37%) than in any other strata. Mass merchants like Target and Walmart had been the largest.
• Physical sales and downloads no longer comprise the complete picture with respect to music sales. Revenues from streaming in the form of subscription and digital performance payments are becoming a factor that needs to be addressed. Hopefully Nielsen SoundScan is considering how to add that to its impressive data system.
• SoundScan measures units, not money. Although the unit sales show a relatively stable or slightly contracted landscape, when looking at prices, costs, margins and ultimately profits, the picture is likely to be less rosy. For example, according to SoundScan, album sales in the year 2000 were over 785 million units. This year the number was 316 million, or 450 million if we include TEA. In the year 2000 CDs cost over $16. Today they average about half that price.
Garth Brooks remains the Top Selling SoundScan Era Artist (since 1993) racking up 68.617 million albums. Joining the Okie on that Top Ten list is George Strait (No. 6; 43.932 million), Tim McGraw (No. 8; 40.993 million) and Alan Jackson (No. 9; 39.63 million). The Beatles are No. 2 with 64.158 million units sold.

Weekly Register: Year End Edition—Country Rises 4.1%

Welcome back from your holiday slumbers to the Weekly Register: Year End Edition. Hopefully, everyone enjoyed some quality time with family and friends. But let’s get back to work.
The graphs tell the top level tale. Country and All-genre album sales ended about 4 percentage points on opposite sides of flat. Country finished the year up 4.1% (44.694 million; 2011—42.923; + 1.77 million) and all-genre sales shrunk -4.5% (315.844 million).
Country also enjoyed stronger increases in digital album sales (country +38%; all genre +14.1%) and track sales (country +12.8%, all-genre +5%).
weeklygrid12-30-12As expected, when measuring digital albums as a percentage of total albums sold the shift to digital continues. The all-genre audience has a higher preference for digital product (country 25.3%; all-genre 37.2%), but both groups added about 6 percentage points to last year’s tally (see grid).
For the past few weeks we have focused upon Taylor Swift’s incredible sales performance—a lot. Is that because we can’t spell any other artist names? Or because Ms. Swift is sending us to the Caribbean for a vacation? Unfortunately, “no.” We are highlighting her achievements because they are astronomical. Red reigns at No. 1 again on both the country and Top 200 album charts with weekly sales of over 241k, creating a 10-week total of 3.11 million units.
Swift also topped both the country and all-genre digital tracks charts—with different songs! “We Are Never Ever…” topped the country tracks chart with almost 236k downloads for the week (3 million RTD). “I Knew You Were Trouble” was No. 1 on Current Digital tracks with over 582k mouses clicking to download the track!!!! (2.04 million RTD).
Evaluating The Bigger Picture
weeklygrid12-23-12Country album sales increased 4.1% this year, or by 1.77 million albums. Is that good?
It’s fair to conclude that it could be much better. Like every year, there were winners and losers—but a problem facing everyone is profitability. While costs are rising across the board for artist development, marketing, promotion and distribution, prices are falling and margins are shrinking. Sadly, the music industry witnessed the demise this year of once proud major label Capitol/EMI. And the worrisome all-genre showing (-4.5%) fuels speculation that more shrinkage lies ahead.
Many pundits believe the music industry is transitioning from physical product to an “access” model. Someday soon streaming will made as easily available on your auto dashboard as it already is on the desktop and mobile. Are you going to care about moving files from hard drive to hard drive once you see that all the music you ever wanted is instantly available wherever/whenever you want it? Right.
But does the industry have a model that can compensate its creators—songwriters, publishers, labels, artists and producers? Unfortunately, the answer is “Not yet.” That is a concern as we enter 2013.
According to SoundScan, country sold 77.912 million albums in 2004. Eight years later we find ourselves selling 43% less, with lower margins, prices and profits.
So yes, it’s exhilarating to watch Taylor Swift wave the country banner proudly around the world on her way to becoming the largest selling Nashville artist ever. It’s also rewarding to note that Nashville has become a creative mecca with highly distinctive artists such as Jason Aldean, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, Brantley Gilbert, Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Jamey Johnson, Colt Ford and more. But there are challenges ahead for music professionals from all genres.
It’s time we started to prepare…
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tea12-30-12

The MusicRow TEA Index sums physical, digital and TEA (track equivalent albums; 10 tracks=1 album) then calculates the percentage of total album sales that come from TEA. The idea is to measure the TEA effect against total album sales. (Our baseline numbers are gathered by industry sources from Nielsen SoundScan.) The 2011 full year TEA Index was 25% country and 27.7% all-genre, and it has expanded to 27.2% and 29.73%, respectively.
The holiday album rush lowered the last month’s numbers which dropped about 2 percentage points for both categories. The TEA index is another way to show that despite the popularity of tracks, they still account for less than one-third of overall album/track sales.

Weekly Register: It’s A Red Christmas!

taylor390As we prepare to delve into the mysteries behind the year’s biggest music sales week, let me begin by wishing all Weekly Register readers a happy holiday and wonderful New Year.

Week 51 was a monster (ended 12-23-12), but unfortunately unable to muster a gain over 2011. Christmas week country album sales were off a slight .73%, but all-genre for the same one-week period was down a more substantial 15.8%. Meanwhile, lo and behold my stocking was stuffed with a special gift from the good folks at Nielsen SoundScan—a shiny TEA chart which as WR readers know converts track sales into handy album equivalents (10 tracks = one album) and will undoubtedly sharpen our 2013 analysis.

weeklygrid12-23-12The elves over at Big Machine, must have been working furiously right up ‘til the night before … since Ms. Swift’s Red (the color of Christmas) scanned another 276k units for the week, giving this project an impressive 2.866 million in 9 weeks! Oh yeah and please paste a “No. 1” sticker on it—it easily topped both the country album and Top 200 album lists. The singer-songwriter also was well represented atop the Digital Track list with “I Knew You Were Trouble” moving up to No. 1 with 221k weekly downloads and an RTD of 1.46 million.

Finally, consulting our nifty new TEA rankings, the precocious, ruby-lipped lass added to her weekly Red album sales with a total of 355k downloads from various Red tracks creating a weekly TEA albums total of 311k. The other part of our SS data surprise, “YTD TEA” shows Red with 3.535 million RTD. Tracks ‘n’ TEA added about 19% to Red’s total.

weeklygrid12-16-12Moving on, we also saw nice jumps for this year’s offerings from Lady Antebellum (No. 2; 78k), Blake Shelton (No. 4; 72k) and Scotty McCreery (No. 9; 48k). Little Big Town (No. 3; 72k) and Jason Aldean (No. 5; 69k) filled in the Top 5. Congrats are a few days premature, but “Cheers!” to Jason as his Night Train will pass the million scans mark before the end of next week.

There’ll be lots to discuss after the end of next week as we close out the stats and shift the analyzer machine into high gear.

But for now you’ll look pretty smart at this weekend’s cocktail parties if you just smile and say, “Yeah, country is doing better than the overall industry—up 3.1%, but not by a whole lot.” Then quietly add, “Labels continued to consolidate this year (Universal and EMI) but it’s exciting to see more than a third of the Top 25 country albums peppered with new faces and fresh sounds.”

Have a safe and happy new year!

 

Network TV Finales Crown Country Winners

Tate Stevens

Tate Stevens, a 37-year-old Belton, Mo. native, received a $5 million recording contract from Sony Music/Syco and a music video premiere at the 2013 Grammy Awards for his win on FOX’s X Factor last night (Dec. 20).

Performances earlier this week included Little Big Town’s “Pontoon” with Stevens in addition to 13-year-old runner-up Carly Rose Sonenclar’s head-turning “How Do I Live” duet with LeAnn Rimes. More than 35 million viewers reportedly cast votes for the season finale.

Throughout the program’s second season, Stevens performed country hits including Chris Young‘s “Tomorrow,” Clay Walker‘s “Fall,” Shania Twain‘s “From This Moment On,” Garth Brooks‘ “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” Keith Urban‘s “Somebody Like You,” Lonestar‘s “I’m Already There” and Craig Morgan‘s “Bonfire” and “Tough.”

Cassadee Pope and Avril Lavgine during The Voice live finale. Photo: Tyler Golden/NBC

The X Factor crowning comes on the heels of NBC’s The Voice, which recently named Cassadee Pope the winner from Team Blake. Pope made impressive single sales, as examined in our Weekly Register for her cover of Keith Urban‘s “Stupid Boy,” which scanned 117k units this week. Pope also performed Miranda Lambert‘s “Over You” and Faith Hill‘s “Cry” during the NBC season.

Yamaha’s Nashville Headquarters Launches Label

Chris Gero, Founder of Yamaha Entertainment Group.

Yamaha Corporation of America has been securing strategic branding partnerships with talent for the past 10 years from its headquarters on Main Street in Franklin, Tenn. This year, Chris Gero’s artist relations offices founded a new division called Yamaha Entertainment Group (YEG).

Traditionally, Gero maintains additional offices in New York, Indianapolis, and Los Angeles, which oversees marketing partnerships with over 3,500 North American acts including Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley, Lady Antebellum’s Dave Haywood, Michael W. Smith, and Michael McDonald. It now offers recording and video production studios to help artists record, produce, and market their original content.

MusicRow spoke exclusively with Gero about founding the new initiative.

“The current state of the music industry is evolving,” said Gero. “As a method of delivering our brand, we started producing videos, concerts, and promotional campaigns including websites for artists. As a result, a shift took place where talent was approaching us to provide these services and partnerships and we were turning away too many opportunities.

“YEG is a significant step forward for us. Our aim is to release five titles a year to have small successes. We have the leverage to keep the costs down and a much higher equity return to the artist. Every deal is different and right now, A&R is under my lead along with the artist services, marketing, film and record production.”

Yamaha’s 18-year partnership with Elton John not only led to the department overseeing the production and direction of John’s Million Dollar Piano Live DVD from Las Vegas, but also led YEG to its first signing of Leogun, a 3-piece rock band associated with the musical icon’s management company.

“We recorded Leogun in Nashville,” said Gero. “We have already released an EP, with a full-length album expected in the spring of 2013.” Following that will be a release by jazz bass player Nathan East, a founding member of Fourplay and collaborator with Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock.

“One end of the spectrum is searching for emerging artists or established artists without a record deal. Another part is a for-hire service, placing product for strategic partnerships and branding opportunities. I’m looking at every possible partnering opportunity that upholds what Yamaha represents.

“Warner’s [Alternative Distribution Alliance] will be our distribution partner for the next three years,” continued Gero. “I outsource publishing and marketing and promotion, indicative of that genre, to work each specific record.

“We have one of the most recognizable brand names on the planet,” he added. “We have an international reach because we’re a global corporation. Yamaha is a very patient company. We’re a big company and we’re not afraid to take these chances. We’re strong enough to be isolated, but we’re in an age where we have to partner with a bunch of other people and help support each other.”

For more information on the company, click here.

Weekly Register: Holiday Harmony, Chart Divide and Pope Wins

Weekly Register regular readers realize (say that 5 times fast!) there’s only two weeks remaining in the 2012 sales year and country is virtually assured that the year’s tally will outdistance 2011—but alas, not by much.

2011 country album sales were 42.923 million according to Nielsen SoundScan. YTD 2012 country sales have tallied 41.133 million, leaving us a mere 1.79 million to break even. This past week country sold 1.63 million, so breaking last year’s benchmark will most certainly occur.

But note that the Y/Y gain of approximately 3.3% in country album sales amounts to only about 1.4 million additional units or just one platinum release.

For example, if Billboard decided to remove Taylor Swift’s Red from the country charts as they have done with several of her album tracks then country sales could be down for the year. (Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble,” this past week’s second most downloaded track overall (167k; YTD 1.24 million) does not appear on the country tracks list.)

Am I the only journalist offended by the Billboard/SoundScan decision to chart music tracks by style, rather than by artist? Billboard has every right and rhyme to organize its charts as it sees fit, but I object to our industry’s accountant of record, Nielsen SoundScan—no longer owned by Billboard—doing the same. Next year will we see a Lady Antebellum or Carrie Underwood track banished from country? Or perhaps Little Big Town will be punished for straying past the censors guidelines? Maybe Jason Aldean, Eric Church or Brantley Gilbert will be arbitrarily banished from the format chart where their careers began. Will no one challenge this behavior or at least ask for a detailed explanation—managers, labels, etc.? Can I get a witness? Or a comment below?

OK, now I feel better, so let’s get on with a rundown of the week’s highlights and sip some holiday spirit!

Holiday Chart Scans
Did you know that according to Nielsen SoundScan (through 12-4-12) Bobby Helm’s “Jingle Bell Rock” is the most played holiday song on this year’s radio airwaves and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” is the most streamed track. Pop/Rock songs dominate holiday downloads (32%) followed by jazz (13%) and country (12%).

There’s lots of seasonal cheer atop the weekly Top Country Current Albums list, too. Holiday sets from Blake Shelton (No. 2; 68k), Lady Antebellum (No. 3; 60k) and Scotty McCreery (No.7; 47k) continue to sell well, but “mirror, mirror on the wall, Taylor Swift’s Red is the fairest of all.” The superstar’s 8-week-old No. 1 album tops both the country and Top 200 charts [again] logging another 208k copies this week for an RTD of 2.59 million.

Cassadee Pope and Avril Lavgine during "The Voice" live finale. Photo: Tyler Golden/NBC

There’s also a new soundtrack release from the Nashville TV show, Music Of Nashville (56k) which enters the chart at No. 4 and a 5-CD Blake Shelton set (No. 62; 1.3k). Shelton’s multi-album package was available this morning on Amazon for $19.88 and at Blakeshelton.com for $21.95.

Heading our sleigh to trackland, we acknowledge The Voice winner Cassadee Pope. Pope’s rendition of “Stupid Boy” scanned 117k units this week and topped country tracks. She was on Team Blake (two consecutive wins) and her version of “Over You” which also topped the chart a few weeks ago sold 17k units to land at No. 21 with RTD of about 225k. Very impressive sales for a reality show contestant!

Country track sales are leveling slightly but showing a healthy 13% increase over last year, especially when compared with all-genre track sales that are up a more modest 6%. And did you know that Country digital albums account for 25.6% of total country albums sold (last year that was 19.2% at this time).

May your holiday be safe, warm and spent with the ones you love. See you next week.