Album Sales Week Of 5/17/11 (Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, Tinie Tempah, New Boyz, Killer Mike + Industry News)

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Sorry for the delay this week; these numbers don’t add themselves!  Just playing, but in all seriousness these figures are a real step down from last week’s showings from Lonely Island and Tyler, The Creator.  For those wondering, Lonely Island kept its momentum and the comedy rap trio scanned an additional 24,000 copies of  Turtleneck & Chain this week, making about 92,000 total units scanned.  The biggest debut this week  is Rome, a Spaghetti Western inspired album from producer Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi.  Rome sounds very intriguing for its concept and numerous cameos from Jack White and Norah Jones.  In other release news, Tinie Tempah moved 16,000 units this week in his U.S. debut, which is sure to surprise many based on the fact that he’s on every pop radio station nowadays.  I’m not too shocked by these figures considering Disc-Overy has been available everywhere outside of North America for well over a year, which means it’s been making its rounds on torrents and file-sharing sites for equally as long.
 

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi “Rome” – 22,717  (67% digital)

Tinie Tempah “Disc-Overy”  – 16,435  (52% digital)

New Boyz “Too Cool To Care” –  12,000 (n/a% digital)

Killer Mike “PL3DGE”  – 4,323  (40 % digital)  [read review]
 
 
If a CD is sold by an artist to a fan at a venue, is it applicable to show up on the Nielson Soundscan?  This has become a gray area, which Billboard and Nielson are both looking to clear up with new guidelines for concert sales protocol.  It’s being suggested that artists much collect signature from each fan that purchases an album for it to count towards their sales figures.  Although neither Billboard nor Nielson have confirmed this, I can speculate that this is a result of successful ticket/album bundling  from artists such as Prince, who counted each ticket sold during his 2004 tour as an album sale due to the fact that he ‘gave away’ an LP to each concert-goer.
 
It’s often thought that educated individuals can prevent future problems; let’s hope that’s the case because Clive Davis recently announced that he will donate $5 million to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.  The four-time Grammy Award winner’s donation will allow for the expansion of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, making the department it’s own school within the university known as the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.  NYU is hoping that this will attract both gifted high school students seeking an education on the music industry as well as renowned industry professionals looking to become faculty members.  The curriculum within the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music sounds pretty extraordinary, with courses such as “The History of Def Jam,” “Branding,” and the free program “Future Music Moguls,” being offered to incoming students.  I don’t know if any of these classes can compare to UConn’s course, “The Wu-Tang Clan’s Impact,” but let’s hope some brilliant minds with fresh ideas emerge from this program.
 
With all the hype surrounding Google’s Music Beta, Amazon’s Cloud, and iTunes’ attempt to offer streaming music, many spectators are blind to underdogs that could very well become major players in the race for monetized streaming music.  Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, who was portrayed as a coke head in 2010’s The Social Network, released a statement today announcing that European digital music powerhouse, Spotify, may finally come to the U.S. this summer.  Parker, who owns an undisclosed share of the company, is optimistic that this will get consumers to pay for music once again.  Spotify operates across several European companies with over one million users that pay for premium services such as the perk of avoiding ads between songs as well as the ability to download music onto iPods and other mobile devices.  Spotify currently has over ten million users that stream their music for free.  Parker’s announcement comes as rumors circulate that Facebook is looking to team up with Spotify for a feature dubbed “Facebook Music.”  This partnership is certainly beneficial on both ends as users can access streaming music via Facebook, while Spotify takes on traffic (and ad revenue) from a potential built-in audience of 500 million users.  This deal would also make Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker partners once again.

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