Bentley Debuts At No. 1

/by

Dierks Bentley’s Home debuted at the pinnacle of the Soundscan Country chart today, moving 55k units, with digital downloads accounting for 35 percent of album sales. It is the Capitol Nashville star’s sixth studio album, and his fourth time to open in the top spot.

Elsewhere, many acts were basking in the post-Grammy/Valentines sales glow. Awards queen Adele saw a 95 percent bump, moving 237k units of her smash 21, for a RTD total of 6.62 million.

Artists scoring week-to-week upswings in album sales totaling 20k or more include Jason Aldean (60%, 25k sold this week), Lady A (46%, 25k), Luke Bryan (20%, 23k), and The Band Perry (60%, 20k).

Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” kept partying in the top Country tracks spot, funneling down another 60k paid downloads.

This week, total Country album sales got an 18 percent bump, selling 836k units. Current Country was up 32 percent, moving 407k.

Digital Country tracks rose 9 percent, selling 3.158 downloads.

Nail and Young Go For the Gold

/by

Following his recent ACM nominations for Male Vocalist and Single of the Year, Chris Young has now earned two RIAA Gold certifications for his chart-topping hits “You” and “Voices”

“You,” which Young co-wrote with Luke Laird, marked his fifth consecutive trip to the top of the chart. “Voices” actually broke a 25-year Billboard record, making only the second time in the modern Billboard chart era that an artist has re-released a song that went to No. 1.

Over the next two weeks, Young has tour stops scheduled in Amherst, MA; Fayetteville, NC; Greensboro, NC; Hershey, PA; Lexington, KY; North Charleston, SC; and Youngstown, OH.

• • •

Similarly, David Nail has earned dual RIAA Gold certifications for his singles “Red Light” and recent No. 1 “Let It Rain” for downloads exceeding 500k.

“It was funny to see ‘Red Light’ starting to pick up downloads again,” comments Nail, “but I think when people heard or bought ‘Let It Rain,’ they went back and found it. It makes me feel good that the songs I’ve recorded have staying power. It’s not just about being a hit, but it’s the moments the songs contain being kind of timeless.”

Nail has dates scheduled this weekend in California and Nevada, but will soon head out for several dates in early March with Gavin DeGraw.

Anderson Merchandisers Acquires Sony DADC

/by

Anderson Merchandisers has acquired physical music distribution rights from Sony DADC. The purchase means the vast majority of physical music sold in America will soon reach customers through Anderson.

Sony DADC currently ships all Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI CDs to U.S. wholesalers and retailers.

Anderson is already the country’s largest music wholesaler, supplying Walmart Stores, Sam’s Clubs, Best Buy, and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service.

Anderson Merchandisers sees a future for CDs, as long as they are affordable. CEO Charlie Anderson notes, “It takes a combination of factors, including making the music available at a price people find attractive. Obviously a more efficient, cost-effective distribution system helps accomplish that.”

The purchase of Sony DADC will enable the industry to streamline cost through Anderson’s “one box” shipment system which allows retailers to receive a single shipment of music from multiple labels.

A privately held company, Anderson Merchandisers, L.P. is an affiliate of Anderson Media, headquartered in Knoxville, TN, and established in 1917. The company has more than 5,800 associates across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

1 Million Music Lovers Join Myspace

/by

Myspace is gaining users for the first time in recent memory. Since the site debuted its Myspace Music Player in December, it has averaged 40,000 new U.S. registrants daily—a total of more than 1 million new users in 30 days.

The player offers free streaming of 42 million songs, the largest online catalog in the world. Myspace has unlimited, on-demand listening, lean-back personalized radio modes, a sophisticated recommendation engine, and integration with Facebook.

Owners Tim Vanderhook, Chris Vanderhook, and Justin Timberlake continue to rebrand the site as a music and entertainment destination. In June they bought Myspace for $35 million from News Corp., which had paid $580 million for the company in 2005.

In January, monthly traffic on Myspace saw its first uptick in almost a year. The four percent increase to 25.1 million visitors, is still greatly reduced from the 2008 peak of 75.9 million unique visitors a month.

To experience the new Myspace music player, go to http://www.myspace.com/guide/music-player.

RIAA Gold and Platinum Certifications

/by

The RIAA has released its latest batch of certifications, and a handful of Nashville artists are among those earning a little metal.

Among Music City’s RIAA-certified talents is Taylor Swift, with Speak Now (Big Machine) at 4x Platinum. Scotty McCreery’s debut, Clear as Day (19 Recordings/Mercury) has achieved Platinum status. Nashville rockers The Black Keys’ El Camino (Nonesuch) release comes in for Gold status. At the top of the stack is Adele’s 21 (Columbia/XL Recordings), which soared to the tune of 6x Platinum.

Also making a large sales impact were Digital singles. Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You” climbed to Platinum status, plus The Band Perry’s “All Your Life” and Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” were both recognized with Gold certs.

The RIAA certified 112 multi-Platinum digital singles for the year in 2011, compared to only certifying 66 in 2010.

“It’s exciting to award more download certifications than ever before and another sign that digital music has gone completely mainstream,” said Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO. “The RIAA’s historic Gold and Platinum program continues to evolve and reflect the way fans access and enjoy music.”

Country Sees Digital Surge

/by

Country consumers arguably have arrived fashionably late to the digital download party, but the YTD 2012 numbers show they are making up for lost time and partying down.

The grids, all based on data from Nielsen SoundScan tell the story. Country digital album sales are up 21.6% over last year and now represent over a quarter of all country physical/digital album sales. Last year at this time the increase in digital album purchases by country consumers was a more modest 13% showing the digital transition is accelerating. That is not to say we should stop manufacturing plastic CDs, since they still account YTD 2012 for about 74.4% of the business.

But the digital wave is not limited to albums. Country track downloads are up 16.5%. Doing the TEA (track equivalent album; 10 tracks = 1 album) math shows that country TEAs are also up a full 16.79%.

This is the first year that we can actually compute an apples-to-apples comparison at album sales with TEAs included. Measuring TEA sales for 2011 and 2012 YTD we find that country TEA album sales are ahead a robust 16.79% and if included in total album sales the TEAs increase country’s YTD lead to 8.87%.

Yes, it’s too early in the year to be cheering as if country had somehow just won the Superbowl, but good news is welcome. So I say to all the country fans arriving at the party via a click or a link, “Come one, come all, buy an album, buy a track, just keep clicking and coming back.”

Redbox/Verizon To Marry Content And Distribution

/by

A newly announced joint venture between Redbox and Verizon Communications has Netflix looking over its shoulder and movie content owners happily anticipating a new round of licensing revenues. The Redbox/Verizon strategy pairs content and distribution together. Financial analysts however, have been unable to assess the new deal because many key details are yet to be announced.

Redbox, owned by Coinstar, secured success by renting physical DVDs from strategically placed kiosks. Redbox’s 2011 Q4 net income nearly tripled to $31.5 million, almost $1 a share, and handily beating estimates of $.65 per share.

In return for its $26 million investment, Verizon will own 65% of the new venture, but few hard details have actually been answered about what content will be available over the new Internet streaming channel and what a subscription will cost. Reuters reports that packages will start at $6/mo. for movie streaming and one DVD rental at a time, but the companies have not commented. Netflix streaming and rental packages start at $15.98. One key differentiator is that Netflix incurs postage expenses sending the DVDs through the mail. Redbox customers will have to drive to the machines to exchange discs.

“We are confident we will have a very competitive offering at a great value,” Coinstar Chief Executive Paul Davis told the Wall Street Journal. The new venture’s spending would “not be at the Netflix level,” he added.

Key to the success of the new streaming venture will be content licensing costs for which Netflix now spends over $1 billion/yr.

In making the announcement, Coinstar also revealed that it will buy additional kiosk vending machines from NCR in a deal valued at around $100 million.

At the end of December, Netflix had about 24.4 million subscribers. Coinstar has about 30 million customers (not subscribers) who rent an average 1.9 million movies daily at its 35,000 kiosks.

“You and Tequila” Certified Platinum

/by

(L-R) Matraca Berg, Chesney, Deana Carter at the Jan. 17 Grammy nominees party in Nashville. Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Kenny Chesney‘s duet with Grace Potter “You and Tequila,” has been certified platinum. This achievement marks the second single from his platinum-selling Hemingway’s Whiskey album to reach this status; “Somewhere With You” was awarded the same honor last year.

“It’s thrilling to know that Deana Carter and Matraca Berg‘s beautiful song has reached so many people,” Chesney said.

He will hit the road with Tim McGraw for a stadium tour opening June 2 in Tampa, FL. The outing has already sold more than 500,000 tickets.

Chesney is up for two Grammys at this year’s awards, and an impressive nine ACM awards, the most of any artist nominated this year.

Redigi.com Facing Legal Action

/by

New website, redigi.com, which purports to create a marketplace to buy and sell new and previously owned digital files is getting a lot of attention. Unfortunately, it is the type of notoriety that involves courts, lawyers , judges and large legal budgets. The site had barely opened its doors last Fall when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent a cease and desist letter accusing it of copyright infringement. In January, Capitol Records filed a complaint, which it then followed up with a request for a preliminary injunction that would prevent redigi.com from re-selling any of Capitol’s previously purchased music content. Redigi.com filed a request for a summary judgement to dismiss the case. At question is whether redigi.com is protected under the first-sale doctrine which gives people with lawful possession of copyrighted material the right to sell it, an area of the copyright law which remains somewhat undefined with respect to digital files.

Declaration of Redigi head John Ossenmacher in opposition to preliminary injunction motion

Capitol Complaint Against Redigi.com File Jan. 6, 2012

Google also weighed into the discussion last week and submitted an application for permission to file an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of neither party, saying, “While Google takes no position on the ultimate merits of this case, it has a specific and vital interest in the legal doctrines underpinning the ‘cloud computing’ industry. Cloud computing enables users to store and process data remotely, in the ‘cloud’ of networked computer servers connected through the internet to the user’s computer, thus freeing users from the need to keep physical files and process data locally with their own hard drives and powerful computers. The continued vitality of the cloud computing industry—which constituted an estimated $41 billion dollar global market in 2010—depends in large part on a few key legal principles that the preliminary injunction motion implicates… A premature decision on incomplete facts could create unintended uncertainties for the cloud computing industry.”

The court denied Google’s request essentially saying its input was not needed.

ReDigi sells music downloads for 79¢ per song and users get a 20¢ coupon for each song they upload so consumers swapping music actually pay only 59¢ per song after figuring in the coupon discount. “ReDigi is a marketplace that gives users tools to be in compliance with copyright law,” says ReDigi head John Ossenmacher. “Before I put a file up for sale ReDigi says you will need to delete them, and if not it won’t take them.” The company also has plans to resell e-books. According to the web site, “Only tracks purchased from legal download sites such as iTunes, etc. are eligible. Once you buy songs on ReDigi, you can sell them back at any time! Store your music in our FREE cloud. When you’re done listening to them, sell them back with the click of a button.” Also mentioned on the site are payments to artists and labels. “The musician and label get a percentage of every sale, often netting more than they get from a new music site and a lot more than they get from streaming music.” However, numbers are not mentioned.

A ruling from the court is expected soon.

Sales Report: The Quiet Season

/by

It lacked the pomp and glamour of the Kentucky Derby or the firery roar of the Daytona 500, but the 2012 Sales Year has now officially begun. But I’m not complaining, because it always starts quietly. Actually the year doesn’t get tightly wound until the last 6 weeks of the calendar year when the holidays induce the mouse-click-mania which still accounts for an enormous percentage of country’s annual sales. In fact, during 2011, country music shifted over 25% of its total album sales during the final two months!

But there are some promising signs among this year’s early album data as we carefully look over the wealth of info collected by the venerable folks at Nielsen SoundScan. Most notably, country ends Jan. 2012 with a 4.7% lead in YTD album sales over 2011 and a total of 2.621 million units. Helping to move the needle were No. 1 and No. 2 country album chart debuts this week from Tim McGraw (No. 1; 68k) and Kellie Pickler (No. 2; 27k).

To add a pinch of perspective, we should note that in 2010 Lady Antebellum released Need You Now during the last week of January and debuted with 481k units for a YTD total of 2.770 million. If we use that as a baseline, this year’s sales would be down 5.3%. But however you chose to view things, it remains early in the year and too soon for meaningful projections, except with regard to release schedules, which are also still pretty vague. Next up on our CD country radar is Home from Dierks Bentley which debuts Feb. 7.

The percentage of country albums sold as digital downloads continues to rise. YTD 2012 about 27% of the total albums were purchased as downloads which shows an increase over last year when the digital percentage at this time was about 23.5%. Debut week digital sales are usually higher than the eventual average. For example this week: Tim McGraw’s disc sales were 34% digital, and Kellie Pickler’s were 33%.

Filling out the Top 5 country album sales for the week are Luke Bryan (No. 3; 16k), Lady Antebellum (No. 4; 15k), and Jason Aldean (No. 5; 13k).

Track Talk
The world of tracks continues to be a goldmine for the circle of artists with mouse-clicking fans. For example, nestled in the Top 20 tracks of the Digital Genre Country Top 100, we find 17 different artists with total Top 20 sales of 649,914 units or a little in excess of 50% of the entire Top 100 country digital tracks list. Another way to illustrate the space between the haves and have-nots is to show that this week, Toby Keith, Luke Bryan and Taylor Swift account for almost 23.41% of the entire Top 100 country track sales!

So a little like the groundhog who comes out to assess winter and maybe see his shadow, let’s settle back in, because it’s too early for predictions and such. We’ll take a peek in a few weeks to see if we see Dierks’ sales shadow…

Until then–Buy Country!