Muve Music Passes 500K Customers

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Cricket Communications has announced that its Muve Music service has surpassed 500,000 customers since its January 2011 launch. That figure puts it behind market leader Rhapsody, but reportedly ahead of Spotify (who hasn’t released U.S. subscriber info) for the No. 2 digital subscription service in the U.S.

Cricket’s Muve Music is the first wireless plan to include unlimited song downloads, ringtones, and ringback tones from thousands of record labels distributed through UMG, WMG, Sony, EMI as well as independents IODA, INgrooves and Merlin. Services are bundled into the cost of monthly wireless plans, beginning at $55.

The service, which arrived in Tennessee in March, is the first music experience designed specifically for the mobile phone without docking or syncing. Cricket reports that its customers are listening to roughly 40 hours and downloading 300 songs a month individually through the service. Total downloads since the company launched number 500 million and listens are above 1.5 billion.

“We’ve brought a fresh approach to digital music and the wireless space,” said Jeff Toig, SVP Muve Music. “We targeted a customer segment that others are not focused on and designed a world class digital music experience, specifically architected for the mobile phone and wireless network delivery. This is a unique formula in the market today and our success through the first year of operation demonstrates that it’s working.”

Cricket Communications is a wireless services company owned by Leap Wireless and serves approximately 5.9 million customers.

Sales Trilogy Part Two: Catalog Is Cool, Again

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Sales Trilogy: Part One showcased the final week of 2011 and some of the basic indicators for country music’s sales performance. (Read it HERE.) Sales Trilogy: Part Two will put the year’s achievements in perspective across genres, by artist, by sales format and by market share.

Regular readers know that the source of this year-end data, is Nielsen SoundScan. Special thanks to Scoop Marketing’s Anna Loynes who is instrumental in compiling and distributing the coveted information.

For those living in a units-based world, it was a good year. Total album sales rose 1.3% to 326.2 million units and if we include TEA (track equivalent albums) in that tally the increase was a healthy 3.2%.

Genres posting the highest gains by percentage were Jazz (+26%; 11.07 million), New Age (+16.2%; 1.93 million), Electronic (+15%; 10.05 million) and Classical (+6.8%; 9.57 million). Coincidence or not, these high-growth genres all qualify for “Long Tail” niche status. Are we seeing a shift in buying habits or is this a reflection of increased availability of catalog due to digital formats? Either way it is something for marketers of these diverse genres to watch.

Formats suffering the slings and arrows of negative growth were Soundtracks (-19.4%; 13.23 million), Latin (-4.3%; 11.81 million), R&B (-4.2%; 55.44 million), Christian/Gospel (-2%; 23.73 million) and Country (-1.8%; 42.92 million).

As expected, Digital track sales (+8.5%) and Digital Album Sales (+19.5%) continued to erode physical format dominance. Digital albums as a percent of Total album sales are now 31.2% compared with 26.4% for 2010. (country digital albums as a percentage of total country album sales are 19%.) This means that over 68% of album sales are still in physical format.

Some “Did you know?” party chatter—In 2010 and 2011 there were 13 albums that sold one million or more units and 35 albums made it into the 500k-999k category both years.

Catalog was an important element in carving out the positive 2011 sales landscape. Looking at overall album sales, deep catalog jumped 12.5%, regular catalog increased 8.9% while current sales fell -4.2%. That trend was most pronounced in the digital arena. Deep digital catalog skyrocketed 23.1%, with overall catalog rising 19.8%.

Market Share
The album market share discussion is colored this year by the knowledge that UMG (29.85%) and EMI (9.62%) are planning to integrate in the coming year. This would give the new combined entity almost 40% of the total sales pie leaving Sony Music (29.29%) and Warner Music Group (19.13%) as distant challengers.

Billboard Top Ten Artist Airplay Based Upon Nielsen BDS (2011 calendar year)

Artist Stats
And now to the artist discussion. Whatever question is asked, guess Adele and her album 21, and odds are almost 100% you will be correct. Adele sold 6.744 million units and in the process earned the No. 1 position for Top Selling Album and Artist. Her track “Rolling In The Deep” was top Selling Digital Track (5.813 million). Nashville, unfortunately was mostly MIA with regard to the various top ten sales lists. However, on the Top Selling Album List Jason Aldean was No. 5 (1.576 million) and Lady Antebellum placed No. 10 (1.2 million). In the Top Artist sweeps Lady A, Jason and Taylor Swift placed in positions 6, 8 and 9 respectively. (see above chart)

 Factoids
>>For the second straight year, Lady Antebellum finishes the year as the biggest selling group of 2011 with more than 2.1 million album sales.

>>Garth Brooks continues to be comfortably the best selling artist in the Nielsen SoundScan era with more than 68.5 million album sales; 5 million sales ahead of the Beatles.

>>Katy Perry ends the year as the most played artist over the airways in 2011 with more than 1.4 million spins; edging out Bruno Mars by 17,000 spins.

>>In 2011, 31% of all albums purchased were through a digital service like iTunes, Amazonmp3 or eMusic, an increase of 5 points from 2010.

Gibson Guitar Announces Strategic Partnership

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The Gibson Guitar Corp. is continuing to diversify its range of products, following the announcement of a strategic partnership with consumer audio leader Onkyo Corporation. The arrangement will add technology resources to Gibson’s Pro Audio Division, which also includes KRK, Cerwin-Vega! and Stanton.

Through the arrangement, Gibson will acquire a majority of Onkyo USA and become the corporation’s second largest shareholder. Additionally, Gibson Chairman/CEO Henry Juszkiewicz will join the Onkyo board of directors and Onkyo CEO/President Munenori Otsuki will join Gibson’s board. The two entities will create a Hong Kong-based venture to design and develop consumer audio products.

“Onkyo makes some of the world’s best audio equipment, and this partnership will give Gibson the ability to bring a deeper and more enhanced audio experience to music lovers around the world,” says Juszkiewicz. “While people may be listening to more music, they are listening to it primarily in a severely compressed format. The aural disparity between a real system and compressed sound is vast, and as a result, they are simply not hearing tremendously rich sounds. With Onkyo, our goal is to bring the same exceptional experience artists demand in the studio to a larger consumer base.”

The agreements are still subject to Japanese regulatory clearance.

In other Gibson news, the New York Times is reporting that rocker (and Nashville resident) Peter Frampton was recently reunited with the Les Paul he played on his classic Frampton Comes Alive album. The guitar was previously thought destroyed in a plane crash in Venezuela, but was apparently removed from the wreckage and sold to a musician in Curacao who has been using it since then. Currently the instrument is at the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville for minor repairs.

Sales Trilogy Part 1: 2011 Country Sales Mostly Flat

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Breaking: According to Nielsen SoundScan, Country album sales have ended 2011 down 1.8% compared with 2010.

Another country sales year is now in the record books and it was a sixteenth-note type finish. Not as close as this year’s Republican presidential Iowa Caucus (8 votes), but hopefully more memorable.

Country album sales ended 2011 down 1.8% representing a total deficit of 795,000 units. But additionally, country benefited from the sale of 148 million digital tracks. This was the first year that country track sales were broken out by SoundScan, so we are unable to compare the tally with last year. But since all-genre track sales were up 8% for the year, and knowing that country digital album sales were up 27% this year, it is probably a safe guess that country track sales grew faster than the average 8%. In that case, a quick wave of the TEA magic wand (track equivalent album; 10 tracks= 1 album) would indicate that overall, 2011 country sales were flat or even a wee bit up.

We’ll have a detailed analysis of the year’s performance later in the week, but for now here is the post-holiday wrap.

Lady Antebellum owned the top of the chart again this week shifting over 53k units, followed by Jason Aldean, who got to throw his kinda party ringing up over 24k units. In the third position it was cheery Scotty McCreery, with over 22k units and a clear as day view of Platinum goalposts in his near future. Filling out the Top 10 in positions 4-10 were Luke Bryan, Toby Keith, Taylor Swift, The Band Perry, Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert and Eric Church (now in Gold+ status).

If you haven’t heard country’s latest party anthem, “Red Solo Cup,” then you really should get out more. It took four writers (two sets of twins) to perfect this remarkable ode to the disposable vessel of choice for holiday toasts. But it was worth it. Under Toby Keith’s inspired tutelage, the song is the embodiment of a big fat hit. This week it added over 206k downloads to its track sales total which is now over 904k. That showing was enough to earn a No. 11 position on the all genre Tracks chart, but not enough to get to first place which was owned by LMFAO (Laughing My F****ing A** Off). LMFAO’s “Sexy And I Know It” was downloaded an incredible 416k+ times.

Returning to the country tracks list, Taylor Swift landed in positions No. 2 and No. 4 with her “Safe & Sound” collaboration (151k+) and latest track, “Ours” (92k). Lucky Luke Bryan’s “I Don’t Want This Night To End,” moved to No. 3 with 128k+ downloads.

Factoids

  • YTD Digital album % of Total Album Sales—31.2% (same week YTD 2010—26.4%)
  • YTD Country Digital Album Sales % of Total Country Album Sales—19.1% (same week YTD 2010—14.7%)

SoundCloud Makes It Rain

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A recent report on Digital Music News shows that over $450 million in cash was spent investing in music startups in 2011. Spotify claimed a massive piece of the action with a mind-boggling $100 million infusion, and social sound platform SoundCloud nabbed a healthy $10 million.

Yesterday, SoundCloud edged closer to Spotify territory by raising an undisclosed amount of funding rumored to be valued at $50 million. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Kleiner partner Mary Meeker will become a board observer for the SoundCloud.

“SoundCloud has seen exponential growth this year in terms of users and greatly evolved our product offerings,” said founder & CEO, Alexander Ljung in a press release on the company’s website. “With Kleiner Perkins’ impeccable track record for recognizing and investing in companies with a long-term view, and their understanding and support for the potential of sound, we couldn’t be more excited about working together.”

Launched in 2008 by Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud enables its user base of 9 million to create, record, and share works through the web as well as receive feedback from community members. Sounds and works can be accessed virtually anywhere using the iPhone or Android apps. Just before the end of 2011, Hypebot listed some of the best and most creative SoundCloud campaigns to show how artists are using the site to engage with their fans.

Klout Creates New Class Of Brand Promoters

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If you are a frequent social networker, chances are you already know your Klout score which is measured on a scale of 1-100. The average score is 20, says the ratings site. New York Post writer Garett Sloane opines, “Having a higher Klout score than a rival is the latest form of business one-upmanship.”

Now about 2 years old, Klout monitors your Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and other social networking accounts to see what kinds of reactions you get and how often people are engaged by what you are posting. “Adding more networks…can only increase your score,” claims the site’s online information which also explains, “Klout measures influence online using data from your social networks. Anywhere you have an online presence, you have the opportunity to influence people by creating or sharing content that inspires actions such as likes, retweets, comments and more. The more engagement your posts receive, the more influential you are. Klout uses this information to provide you a Klout Score that measures your overall influence.” Joe Fernandez, Klout CEO/Founder told the Post, “Ultimately, we look at things like how far does your message spread, what proportion of content you create gets acted upon and how influential are the people acting on your message.”

Recently Klout altered its methodology which resulted in the lowering of many individual scores and understandably upset many of those who were downgraded. Expected to soothe the ruffled feathers is a deeper, more transparent look from the company into exactly how the scores are created and tabulated slated to arrive in mid-January 2012.

TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah noted in a Klout editorial, “It’s worth remembering that Klout only claims to measure one’s online influence, and I tend to think that much of the backlash against the company is rooted in the misconception that one’s Klout score maps to the offline world. It’s easy to grandstand and take a publicly moral stance against what Klout is doing, but as it is with entrepreneurship and certainly the web, there are no rules. Companies and users are making the rules as they go, and that’s just the way it should be.”

Mashable’s Samantha Murphy playfully suggests that those with higher scores tend to be the ones most satisfied with the methodology. “It seems as though it’s those with lower Klout scores that detest the concept, while members with higher scores are reaping the benefits of the platform. Some have even gotten job offers, free products and gift certificates from companies that want to keep the Klout influencers on their radar,” she says. “Obtaining a high Klout score is becoming more of something to strive for, with some even highlighting their number on resumes.” Murphy has created a 7-point list of how to get more Klout. “Build a network and create meaningful content,” she advises. “If you keep focused on your network strategy and your content strategy, you’ll succeed.” (See her complete list here.)

Klout scores describe a very limited aspect of a person’s personality and/or lifestyle. However, it seems that marketers are beginning to realize that enlisting social networkers with high scores who broadcast their messages to a large audience can be extremely influential in promoting a brand or a product such as music.

Swift, Civil Wars Combine Forces On New Song

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Santa must have been paying attention, because we got a whopper of a present right before departing for the holiday break. On December 23, Taylor Swift released a new song called “Safe & Sound” to iTunes, which quickly became the digital retailer’s No. 1 seller. Featuring breakout duo The Civil Wars, “Safe & Sound” is the lead single from the soundtrack to the highly anticipated Lionsgate film The Hunger Games, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins. Swift wrote the song with Joy Williams, John Paul White and T Bone Burnett.

Taylor revealed the news exclusively to her fans via Twitter. Thirty minutes prior to the song’s release, she posted that she was very excited about something that was “going to be happening VERY soon,” then posted a link to the iTunes download. Listen to the track here.

Burnett is producing the soundtrack, which will be released by Universal Republic and feature all newly written songs. Also appearing on the collection will be The Decemberists and Grammy winners The Arcade Fire. The Hunger Games soundtrack will debut in advance of the film’s theatrical release on March 23.

One Sales Week To Go

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The song we’re a’ singing has changed from “Jingle Bells” to “Auld Lang Syne” which means there is only one week left in the Nielsen SoundScan year. Yes, soon we’ll be talking about 2011 in past tense. But WAIT! We’re not there yet! First, let’s see what happened last week during country music’s biggest single sales week of 2011.

Country shifted 2.186 million albums this past holiday week for a YTD total of 42.843 million. (Same week sales in 2010 were 2.319 million.) Top country albums stacked up pretty much as they have for the past few weeks with Lady Antebellum on top (110k+) followed by Scotty McCreery (85k+) and Jason Aldean (75k+).

I think it was Kanye West who once said to Taylor Swift, “These numbers are good, but Michael Buble’s Christmas album is really great!” Well, it’s possible that Mr. West didn’t say that exactly, but it’s not possible to dispute the power of holiday sales when properly harnessed. Buble’s offering sold a joyous 467k+ this week placing it in first place for all albums, giving it a 9-week total sales of close to 2.5 million units and placing smiles on the faces of  Warner Music execs everywhere. The year’s other prime mover has been Adele. Her 21 owned the No. 2 position as the holiday week closed with sales of close to 400k for the week and almost 5.68 million in 44 weeks.

We’ve been talking a lot about the importance of tracks on this page and this week’s tally adds fuel to the fire. Toby Keith’s incredible “Red Solo Cup,” a song that could only have been written by two pairs of brothers—the Beavers and the Warrens—was downloaded over 176k times this week followed by Taylor Swift’s “Safe & Sound” which features the Civil Wars and is included in the soundtrack of The Hunger Games which shifted over 135k copies. Luke Bryan also enjoyed a spin in the over 100k circle as his “I Don’t Want This Night To End,” sold 109k+ copies.

Fans last week downloaded 4.655 million country music tracks; YTD the tally equals 142 million. Comparing track vs. album revenue this past week shows albums contributing about $21.86 gross revenue (2.186 X $10) and tracks adding $6.005 million  (4.655 X $1.29). On a revenue basis tracks accounted for an additional 28%. (Of course all the albums are not all $10 items and some of the tracks are priced below $1.29.)

Overall numbers are shown on our chart. Country is down 2.1% and overall music sales are up 1.3%. Stay tuned as we shut down the 2011 tally next week and begin slicing and dicing results to find the hidden stories, trends and look toward 2012.

CoverGirl Gets Lashed For Taylor Ad

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Thanks to her relationship with CoverGirl, Taylor Swift has brought her youthful visage to the pages of glossy magazines everywhere. But there’s a new advertisement with our beloved T-Sweezy that won’t be appearing in print in the near future. Super sadface.

According to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, the ad for CoverGirl’s NatureLuxe Mousse Mascara was “enhanced” to make Taylor’s lashes look even more full. Then those killjoys in the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division got wind of the doctoring and ruled it “misleading,” prompting CoverGirl owner Procter & Gamble to yank the ads.

The Times article explains that N.A.D. examined the ad’s claims and the implied benefits, determining that the enhanced photos wouldn’t provide an exact facsimile of Taylor’s lustrous lashes. Ads don’t typically get pulled for “airbrushing,” so it’s apparently a pretty thin line for what constitutes fraudulent advertising.

Which is strange, because let’s face it: advertisements, particularly in television, regularly “enhance” the truth in all manner of ways to exploit us. Like, oh no, can I really not get ripped abs without exerting any actual effort or thwart bank robberies using only a buffalo chicken sandwich? Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that it doesn’t work out between Kim Kardashian and what-his-name? Wait, don’t tell me. I want it to be a surprise.

In fairness, CoverGirl did add some fine print to the Taylor spot that reads “lashes enhanced in post production.” See? No harm done. I wonder if a generation of dudes wishes that Axe Body Spray had put fine print to the effect of “spraying Axe body spray will not make an army of scantily clad women cross the ocean for you”?

In other Taylor news, she gave fans an early Christmas present (via Instragram) last night (12/22) with the release of “Safe & Sound,” a collaboration with The Civil Wars that appears on The Hunger Games soundtrack. It is available for digital download in the iTunes store right now.

Also, these hamsters rule. Just sayin’.

Country Stars Unlikely To Mimic Comic Sales Model

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Comedian Louis C.K. recently earned over $1 million selling a DRM-free comedy special, direct-to-fans from his website for $5. And once again the process gives rise to questions about new business models, piracy and online marketing. Digital Music News publisher Paul Resnikoff offered an insightful overview, “Perhaps the error is to link these accomplishments with developing artists, because creating stardom is now an entirely different game. Heading into this, C.K. had major television exposure, access to shows like Fallon, and an audience that wanted more. That doesn’t diminish the accomplishment, but definitely changes the perspective. Because in the end, Louis’ challenge was less about building fans, and more about satisfying and monetizing the ones he already has.”

Louis C.K. hired a team to tape and create a video of two performances at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan and then distribute the video directly via a website built for that purpose. According to various reports, within 12 hours, over 50,000 fans had downloaded the video, enough to cover all costs. It took 12 days to reach sales of $1 million.

In a note on his website the artist explained, “The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it?”

In a subsequent note (12/13) C.K. detailed costs and revenues for the project pointing out what would have happened if a large company had funded the project.

“…they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.”

Most recently, on Dec. 21 a note appeared on the web site expressing the comedian’s intention to divide the million dollars into four pieces including charities, his production costs, staff and himself.

Will Country Artists Follow This Path?

Is there a lesson or anything new going on here for the music industry?  You could answer, “Maybe” to both questions. But with respect to country music we have yet to see an established star dump the label and go direct. Perhaps that’s because inside the Music City format, record sales don’t really mean much for most superstar artists. The real money is earned filling arenas and (for a select few) stadiums. The secret behind accomplishing that task is getting strong support from country radio. Fans don’t follow album sales on SoundScan each week, but they do listen on the airwaves to hear their favorite artists. Can you name a single country artist routinely filling 12,000 seats and up who isn’t getting country radio exposure?

Good managers know where an artist’s bread is buttered and they know who grooms the thoroughbred promotion teams in the race for country radio airplay. Yes, the major labels. So sure, there may be a dozen or so country music artists that could easily make money mirroring the Louis C.K. DTF experiment. But eschewing a major label might also result in short term gain and long term career suicide. Major label support in this format is only about one thing, radio dominance for the country audience. Until that changes, don’t look for artists to fool around with a paltry million dollars at the risk of losing $50 million at the box office.