Album Sales Week of 4/14/09

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Album Sales Week of 4/14/09
Day 26 “Forever in a Day” – 113,314 (american idol/making the band = more powerful than oprah/obama?)
Pastor Troy “Feel Me Or Kill Me” – 4,267
Bernie Williams “Moving Forward” – 2,947 (Go Yanks!)
Prefuse 73 “Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian” – 956

Week of 4/7/09
Jadakiss “The Last Kiss” – 179,706 (2nd week – 44,785 – 67% drop)
MIMS “Guilt” – 16,664 (2nd week – 4,253 – 66% drop)
Lady Sovereign “Jigsaw” – 4,285 (2nd week – 1,312 – 56% drop)

Week of 3/31/09
UGK “UGK 4 Life” – 117,474 (3rd week – 14,570 – 45% drop)
Flo Rida “R.O.O.T.S.” – 105,879 (3rd week – 18,779 – 41% drop)
Bow Wow “New Jack City Pt. II” – 50,630 (3rd week – 6,742 – 48% drop)

Week of 3/24/09
Jim Jones “Pray IV Reign” – 73,025 (4th week – 6,431 – 35% drop)
Slim Thug “Boss of All Bosses” – 68,192 (4th week – 7,409 – 34% drop)
DOOM “Born Like This” – 21,318 (4th week – 2,649 – 19% drop)

Week of 2/24/09
K’naan “Troubador” – 36,564 (he’s stabilized… 2k units/week @ 50/50 digital/physical split)
B-Real “Smoke N Mirrors” – 11,040 (his sales are steadily declining)
N.A.S.A. “Spirit of Apollo” – 13,314 (This has overtaken B-Real’s slightly stronger 1st week)

Big story next week:
Asher Roth “Asleep in The Bread Aisle” is currently the #1 album on iTunes… (priced at $7.99…  gotta love his “no gimmicks” release date of 4/20 to connect all the dots to the mainstream-ization of pot culture, mesh shorts and red solo cups… John Brown is no longer the King of the Burbz, and hip-hop is officially at home in rural PA)
Rick Ross “Deeper Than Rap” (we’ll finally get to see if humiliation is effective marketing)

And in related “industry” news:

• Physical Sales for Music in U.S. Decline 30%
This is a big deal.  Physical sales declined 40% between 2001 and 2007.  Now, from ’07 to ’08 we’re seeing a serious hurting.  Can’t say I’m surprised with all these retailers closing and the abundance of piracy

Apparently, Europe is leading the way in the fight against piracy.

• “Illegal” download site “The Pirate Bay’s” creators sentenced to Jail time

• Fighting piracy – France has a bill to cut off service to repeat illegal downloaders… EU bill would make it impossible
The E.U. is protecting individual privacy and the right to operate freely on the net from the government, and the French government is trying to protect artists from pirates (not Somali) by using the government to control the ISPs.

• 100% increase in legal downloads after iPRED (Swedish anti-download laws) enacted
This is a promising # to those in the biz…

• Sales down in iTunes for tracks that were priced higher
File this one under “I told you so.”  After screwing the fans for years and years, the major labels continue to miss the point.  Fans don’t want to pay more for music.

• Despite recession, fans will buy music
Really?  Guess that’s good news too.

• Echo (music marketing service) to shut down in 60 days (just in case you thought things were good)

• Music Festivals closing (via billboard.biz)
This is rough news, for those of us who have been thinking that “live music” and the general merging of cultures/genres was leading to a new path in the business of music.

And in paying attention to music, I can’t help but notice these other media:

• DVD Sales down… Best Buy makes move towards home video service
I think the merging of TV and computer into one home media system is the future.  I just saw Netflix on Demand on an Xbox for the first time.  It’s awesome.  This is why we’re not so far off from this

• Flash on TV and mobile (see… i told you so)
You may not care, but the lack of Flash on the iPhone has been a major sticking point for a lot of people and this is a necessary step towards the merging of the computer monitor and the TV

And finally… if movies on demand and instant gratification are on the rise… killing trees to print day-old news is def on the decline:

• Times reports $74 milion loss in 1st quarter

• Gov to bail out newspapers?

Till next time… try not to get too depressed, and as usual, hit me up with questions, comments etc.