Big Wig 
The Industry Report:
Hey everybody… welcome to another week of industry news, album sales and more.
Let’s start off with #s from the 2nd big hip-hop release date of the year:
Album Sales 3/24/09
Jim Jones – Pray IV Reign – 42,982 (7% digital)
Slim Thug – Boss of All Bosses – 32,721
MF Doom – Born Like This – 10,895 (31% digital)
Hell Rell – Get in Line or Get Lined Up – 638
Camp Lo – Stone & Rob Caught on Tape – 719
Album sales to date 3/17/09:
Gorilla Zoe – 46,823
CNN – 6,191
Saigon & Statik Selektah – All in a Day’s Work – 1353 (880 first week)
Now, for some choice news from the dying music industry/media/entertainment world:
THE SKY IS FALLING!!!
imeem, the music streaming/social networking giant, once consistently listed as one of the top 100 sites on the net, is in danger of going out of business. Not only do they owe $30 million to the major labels for stream revenue, but their advertising (which costs something like $5k per day just for that home page leaderboard) isn’t even beginning to cover the cost of running the site and company (staff of 70). Click HERE for the full story.
Also, just today, seeqpod, a site that indexes music streams on blogs, streaming sites and elsewhere, and has received $7 million in venture capital, announced their bankruptcy.
I’m going to go ahead and guess that iLike is in trouble too. They own Gcast, a formerly free phone-to-podcast service. They are now charging $99 and limiting you to 2 hours of usage per 90 days. Wack. This used to be free and unlimited. Why the rate hike? My guess is, we’ll be hearing about the woes of the parent company soon enough.
I guess streaming isn’t the future many seemed to think it was.
So live shows should be where it’s at, right? But Ticketmaster recently had their credit rating downgraded due to poor 4th quarter earnings.
In such hectic times, people at least want to know what’s going on, right? A steady source of journalistic integrity? Not if it’s printed on paper!
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Blender, the music magazine tied to the “Maxim” family, announced they were shutting their doors.
And the Chicago Sun Times filed for Bankruptcy, now the 2nd major newspaper in Chicago to do so.
Word is, King Magazine is also going to be shutting their doors after the next issue hits stands (via Gawker).
So who is making money right now? I’ll tell you who… Rockband. The video game just surpassed $1 billion in sales.
But parent company EA, even though they announced taking in $4 billion last year, is concerned, as the cost of making these games is out of control.
The Orchard, the digital music distributor, is also doing pretty well for themselves. Click HERE for details:
I knew this was all going to tie in somehow… music, youth culture, media, advertising, fashion etc., which is all nicely bundled up, packaged, and sold by Mark Ecko. He’s now in debt $170 million after a poor holiday retail season. Click HERE for details and full story.
As the owner of Complex (we should all know what’s going to happen to the magazine by now), Mark Ecko serves advertisements to nahright, VladTV, OnSMASH and other websites. What’s going to happen to these popular blogs if Ecko goes out of biz? Will Eskay and Vlad still be able to cake off of advertising exclusively? Will their sites shrivel? Or is their popularity and success solely based on content/tastemaking etc?
As usual, let me know your thoughts. Till next time…
Peace.