As the sweltering summer heat swirls, rising like laser beams on a major country stadium tour stage, the temperature isn’t the only thing that’s hot. Zac Brown Band’s latest offering Uncaged tops both country and all genre charts this week with debut scans of 234k units.

But joy on one side of the industry see-saw can mean pain somewhere else. In this instance, while Atlantic celebrates the hearty start by one of its signature acts, Universal Music Group is having to stave off criticism that its upcoming bid to purchase EMI will unbalance the global music marketplace. To win regulatory approval Universal is virtually being forced to hack off its own body parts to slim its hefty footprint. Assets being rumored for the scalpel include Virgin UK and/or US plus EMI Classics. This increasingly costly deal could easily extend into October before being resolved.

And then there is the disturbing news that, according to Nielsen SoundScan, catalog albums are outselling current ones. During the first six months of 2012, 76.6 million catalog albums bested 73.9 million currents. Nielsen analyst David Bakula cites lower prices on catalog material ($5.99—$7.99) for the unsettling occurrence.

The Cash Drawer
It ought to be Zac Brown’s birthday today, because country fans sure left a plethora of presents on his musical doorstep. According to the ever vigilant Neal Spielberg, of Spielberg Entertainment, “ZBB debuts at No. 1 on the Top 200 albums chart, Top digital albums and Top country albums. Adding to the dominance is his No. 1 on the country catalog chart with Foundation and No. 6 Pass the Jar, selling 14K and 5.2K respectively. Add in You Get What You Give, rising to No. 6 country (17k) and it adds up to a whole lot of ZBB. 270K to be exact, giving ZBB 26% of country albums sales this week.”

Thanks Mr. Spielberg. As they say on the six o’clock news, “That sums it up nicely.” Kudos to Zac, Atlantic and the entire ZBB team. And special thanks as well to Amazon and iTunes whose debut week price wars and overall country music sales were responsible for much of the week’s good news.

Also a nicely placed debut in the Warner Music camp is the latest from Hank Williams Jr. Old School New Rules enters the chart at No. 4 with sales over 25k.

All that debut energy boosts the weekly country album tally into the million+ range. Even the Top 75 Country Current list broke 600k this week and as our Weekly Register grid shows, country album sales (week ended 7/15/12) are now up a healthy 6%!

TrackingTheTracks!
As predicted last week, Little Big Town’s “Pontoon” easily glided into Gold territory while remaining at the top of the Digital Genre Country tracks chart for a second week with downloads over 84k. And, we now know to expect the vocal quartet’s next studio album, Tornado, on Sept. 11. But the week belongs to ZBB. So we must also note that the artist with the most unique hat in country music placed FIVE tracks in the Top 30!

Do you know how many country tracks get downloaded each week on average? This week country downloaded 3.391 million tracks and we have a YTD total (28 weeks) of 90.386 million or an average of 3.23 million downloads per week.

See you next week!

Country music’s marketing and sales universe is rapidly evolving. Fast-moving digital influences are sending shock waves across tried and true exposure methods—sometimes causing surprises, and sometimes confirming ultimate truths. Floating into focus this week is Little Big Town’s latest track, “Pontoon” which completes a stunning seven week climb to the No. 1 position on the country tracks chart adding almost 86k downloads this week and looking like it will pass Gold status (500k) next week.

One dependable marketing pillar that remains trustworthy is musical quality. When “Pontoon” was released last May, Robert K. Oermann wrote in MusicRow, “The crunchy groove and relaxed party atmosphere are right on the money for summertime. It goes without saying that the singing and harmonies are pluperfect bliss.” (Producer Jay Joyce and writers Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean were no doubt equally thrilled when they heard this track emerge from the studio.) Capitol Records wisely realized the record’s value and leveraged it into a high visibility moment on the June 6 CMT Awards TV show.

LBT’s core fans discovered the song in large enough numbers for it to debut on the  May 27 country tracks list at No. 11 (32k downloads). June 3 the song ebbed slightly to No. 13 (26k). Then came the well-conceived CMT Awards performance and “Pontoon” sailed to No. 2 (June 10) with dramatic sales in excess of 81k. Four weeks later and the song has crested at No. 1.

But where is country radio? Isn’t it absolutely imperative to have a Top 5 song in order to open the sales faucet? Perhaps not, because “Pontoon” is still sitting at No. 20 on the Billboard country radio airplay chart (7/9/12). And while 20 is better than No. 40, it’s no secret that songs outside the Top 10 are largely invisible on the country airwaves. Astute observers just saw the same track sales-then-radio effect happen with Brantley Gilbert. Gilbert’s single “You Don’t Know Her…” is No. 1 this week at radio, but has fallen to No. 25 on the tracks sales list after successfully downloading almost 650k tracks RTD over 43 weeks.

The take away is that track sales are becoming a leading indicator and revenue generator out in front of radio airplay. To be fair, radio’s role remains significant. Don’t forget that 500k in track sales is only the TEA equivalent of about 50k album sales. And track sales are not total sales, they are merely sales from a particular consumer group that engages online.

A larger country consumer group is still more comfortable buying plastic discs. In fact, as of this week about 74% of all country music album sales are sold in physical format. This would explain why Capitol has yet to announce a release date for the LBT album. Presumably, they are waiting for the single to gain altitude on the radio charts. As the digital shift continues and streaming/access outlets become more popular, the rebalancing we are starting to see of marketing leverage will become more pronounced. For example, Pandora announced (7-10-12) that it now claims a nearly 6% share of total U.S. radio listening with 54.5 million active listeners at the end of June 2012, a massive increase from last year.

The writing is on the wall. The balance of power between the mighty MP3 (served streaming or downloaded) and terrestrial analog radio, is shifting…. rapidly.

Quick Look
Kenny Chesney stays atop the country album list adding an additional 43k units to his three-week total which is now almost 300k. Our grid snapshots tell the current tale as we anxiously await and watch to find out many Zac Brown Band fans scrambled to get the group’s just released debut.

PS: Be sure to follow @MusicRow and me @davidmross on Twitter for breaking news and more…

Happy 4th of July sales fans and welcome to this week’s half-year 2012 edition of the Weekly Register. Yes, we have passed the halfway mark for 2012 which makes the moment ripe for comparison and prognostication. Hopefully, we can predict a better scenario than the 100+ degree temperatures which our weather bureau keeps calling. Our weekly grid shows country enjoying a 5.8% YTD lead ahead of 2011 while all-genre lags behind last year about 3.3%

Looking at country in 2010 the first six months of album sales accounted for 43% of the year’s total. In 2011 that percentage was 44%. Country albums sales (physical and digital) YTD 2012 are 19.467 million. So averaging the half-year percentage for the last two years predicts 2012 year-end country sales will be 44.75 million or an uptick Y/Y of 4.26%.

Repeating the last paragraph for all genre numbers showed the first six months equaling 44% and 47% for 2010 and 2011 respectively. (Using 45.5% predicts the year will end flat Y/Y with 2011.)

So Weekly Register is officially guessing that country sales will end the year up about 4% and all genre sales will be flat.

Country Quarters: 21%-22%-22%-35%
Based on the above discussion, we can estimate that country sales for Q1, Q2, Q3 might total about 65% of the year’s sales (about 22% per quarter), leaving Q4 the herculan task of ringing up a whopping 35% of total annual sales. Now you can appreciate why sales departments work so hard to create special releases and marketing plans around the fourth quarter. That three month endcap on the year makes a lot of difference when they have to present sales numbers to the “higher ups” in Jan.

The Week’s Tonnage
Chris Cagle enters the country album list at No. 6 this week with almost 15k scans (37% digital). Higher up on the sales chain, Mr. Chesney saw week 2 sales of his Fishbowl release sink 68% to about 61k, while still keeping him afloat in the No. 1 position. Luke Bryan remains in the No. 2 spot again this week. His album has been on sale for 47 weeks, but still added almost 22k units to his RTD total of 1.225 million. Bryan’s label, “scrappy Capi” is obviously not throwing in the proverbial towel till the last merger document gets signed. That Murphy Rd. crew (with assists from Jackson and Church) proudly owns positions 2, 3 and 5 on this week’s Top 75.

The Top 200 list this week was a battle of the bands with Linkin Park edging out Maroon 5 for the No. 1 position with scans of 223k. Maroon 5 was close behind in no. 2 with 222k. Justin Beiber’s week two slide (about the same as Chesney) was 69% which landed the hearthrob in No. 3.

In country’s digital tracks arena Luke Bryan’s “Drunk On You” (77k units) remains on top, with Little Big Town’s “Pontoon” climbing from 4 to 2 (72k units) and Chesney’s “Come Over” sliding slightly from 2 to 3 with about 66k downloads. Keep an eye on Gloriana’s “(Kissed You) Good Night” which passes the 500k RTD mark this week as it inches from No. 10 to No. 9 (37k).

Zac Brown Band’s July 10 release, Uncaged, will be country’s next big platter-to-matter on the summer sales train. All aboard….