Audible Hype Forums

Ian Rogers - GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit Keynote

2008-11-18T10:12:18-05:00

http://topspinmedia.com/2008/11/grammy-northwest-musictech-summit-keynote

Not only is digital not making up for physical sales, as the tracks are unbundled and the model is a singles-driven iTunes business, the actual value of a unit of music continues to plummet. That said it’s with great respect and with the belief that I’m as big a lover of music as anyone in this room I admit to you:

I don’t care.

The lamenting we read in the press is not the story of the new music business. Continuing to talk about the health of the music industry on these terms is as if we’d all been crying about the dying cassette business in 1995.

...IMHO the only perspectives that matter, that of the artist and the fan. I see news about the health of the music industry as defined by the stock price of WMG or quarterly earnings of UMG, Sony, and EMI every day. What I don’t see, apart from a few articles on Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, is an update on how the world is changing from the artist point of view. But I tell you, when I talk to managers and artists they feel it, they feel an ability to take their careers into their own hands, to redefine what success means for them, and that is the emergence of the new music business.

Lil’ Wayne sets records for concert profits

2009-09-09T10:58:57-05:00

Source:

By Mitchell Peters

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The final numbers are in for Lil Wayne’s 2008-2009 North American touring, and it appears the rapper will have the highest grossing hip-hop outing of the year—and the most lucrative rap jaunt that Billboard has ever tracked.

Seventy-eight Lil Wayne headlining arena and amphitheater concerts in North America from December 14, 2008, through September 6, 2009, grossed about $42 million and drew nearly 804,000 fans, according to Shawn Gee, Lil Wayne’s tour producer and tour business manager.

“It’s definitely one of the biggest in the last couple of years,” Gee tells Billboard.com. “Our plan was to prove that Wayne was a viable headlining arena artist.”

The second highest-grossing rap tour that Billboard has tracked was Jay-Z’s 2008 jaunt with Mary J. Blige, which grossed $34.6 million and drew 310,694 concertgoers to 28 shows. Kanye West’s 2008 Glow In the Dark tour comes in third, having pulled in $30.8 million from 49 concerts that attracted 507,853 fans.

Other lucrative hip-hop tours in recent years include 2005’s Eminem/50 Cent Anger Management tour, which grossed $22.7 million from 23 shows; and a 50 Cent tour in 2003 that rang up nearly $23 million in ticket sales, much of it co-headlining with Jay-Z on the Roc-the-Mic tour.

Hip-hop tours rarely crack the Billboard year-end list of the top 25 grossing tours, but it’s likely that Lil Wayne’s 2009 trek will earn a spot on this year’s tally.

The concerts promoted Lil Wayne’s 2008 album, “Tha Carter III,” which has sold 3.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The rapper’s oft-delayed next album, “Rebirth,” is due November 24.

Although no specific touring plans are currently in the works, Gee believes that Lil Wayne will continue as an arena-sized headliner.

“We definitely want to capitalize on the success we’ve had and want to continue building Wayne as a touring artist and not just an artist that tours,” he says. “We established him as a headline artist and I think it grows from there.”

(Editing by Dean Goodman at Reuters)

Billboard earnings/sales recap 2009

2009-08-26T13:18:54-05:00

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3id7aa74bd2d86729b9217152eff86b9d0

Analysis: Music Biz Earnings Recap
August 25, 2009

By Glenn Peoples, Nashville

The latest round of earnings releases by music and music-related entertainment companies was a collection of troubled performances and requests for cautious optimism. As has been the case for many quarters, these companies emphasized the positives as they ride out this downturn, rebuild and try to be well positioned for the future.

Halfway through 2009, there are a number of problems companies will need to overcome. Recorded music revenue suffers from two problems: the continued fall of CD sales (down almost 21% year over year) and a stagnation of digital download revenues (basically flat for the last five or six months).

Entertainment retailers continue to shy away from the CD, but have had uneven success shuffling their product mixes to bring in customers. As a result, expect music inventories to shrink even more as music is swapped out for other products and more under-performing stores are closed.

Publishing is the bright spot, relatively speaking. Unfortunately, its health is tied closely to that of recorded music. Promoters have been dealing well with a sour economy but have few signs a recovery will take place in the immediate future. Forecasts have gross domestic product shrinking by 2.8% in 2009 and growing between 2% and 2.8% in 2010. White House and Congressional budget officials predict the unemployment rate will top 10% by the end of this year and will worsen in 2010.

Here’s a recap of recent earnings releases:

-- Warner Music Group’s fiscal Q3 was a mixed bag. The company posted a net loss of $37 million on revenues of $769 million. Total revenue was down 9% while digital revenue was up 11%. However, digital revenue grew only 1.2% sequentially and publishing revenue was hit by a 21% decline in mechanical royalties. The company continued to contain costs—SG&A;was down 14%—but free cash flow was only $11 million. A few items from WMG’s earnings call are worth noting: over half of its artist roster is not signed to multi-rights deals, WMG does not anticipate the arrival of a new physical format that will result in a transformation, and Paramore’s direct-to-consumer box set edition of Brand New Eyes is outselling the standard CD version 13 to one (which hints at the opportunity that lies in direct-to-consumer sales).

-- The Orchard turned further away from profitability in Q2, in part because of costs associated with getting its physical distribution arm up and running. The company’s Q2 revenue increased 12.3% to $15.06 million. Loss from operations increased 30.2% to $1.15 million and net loss increased 38.6% to $1.09 million. Gross margin rose a point to 27%. In spite of the Q2 performance, the company has a promising long-term strategy that will take more time to bear fruit.

-- Trans World has staved off disaster but has little to show for its efforts, as exemplified by its Q2 results. The entertainment retailer’s total sales dropped 23% to $166 million and net loss was $17.8 million, a $2 million improvement over last year’s Q2. Comp store sales dropped 15% and the company ended Q2 with 697 stores (versus 789 last year). Trans World has lowered its inventory (as it has closed stores), reduced borrowings under its line of credit, improved gross margin and lowered SG&A;. All good developments, but they struggled to make a dent in the decline in revenue. Q2 comp store music sales were down 18% and CD sales dropped 23%. Music still represents a large part of the retailer’s business—38% versus 39% last year. As of Monday afternoon, Trans World’s market capitalization stood at a mere $32.3 million.

-- Entertainment retailer Hastings’ Q2 was not as bad as that of Trans World. Revenues dropped 6.7% to $117 million while net loss improved slightly to $0.4 million. Music revenue dropped 15.6%, however, and video game revenue sank 20.9%. The company took a conservative approach by lowering its capital expenditures, debt and inventory.

-- Ticketmaster’s Q2 had ups and downs. Revenue fell 7.1% to $355 million while net income dropped 86% to $3.1 million. Ticketing revenue sustained a big drop of 18.4% to $311 million. The artist service division had revenue of $43.1 million and operating income of $1.3 million. Losses in concerts negated gains in sports and family segments.

The loss of Live Nation volume stung Ticketmaster as the former customer accounted for 3.5 million of Ticketmaster’s 3.9-million decline in ticket sales. In the Q2 earnings call, Ticketmaster emphasized increased adoption of paperless ticketing (the upcoming Miley Cyrus tour, as well as Nine Inch Nails and some Bruce Springsteen dates) and the likelihood of improved ticket sales in the future. Consumers have not taken risks, the company explained, and next year will stop putting off ticket buys.

And, of course, the company made its argument for the proposed merger with Live Nation (the Department of Justice is expected to rule on the merger in Q4). A combined company, said CEO Irving Azoff, it the “instrumental piece” in transforming the company and knocking down barriers that prevent each company from transforming alone.

Live Nation, the hopeful partner of Ticketmaster, had a mixed report as it continues to carry out its long-term strategy. A drop in revenue overshadowed cost containment measures and gains in ancillary revenue streams. Revenue was down 5.9% to $1.1 billion. The Q2 net loss was $27.2 million and the loss from continuing operations was $26.8 million.

A good gain in ticketing revenue was trumped by a 18.9% drop in International revenue. Ticket sales for future events looked good as deferred revenue increased $628 million, nearly $100 more than in Q2 2008. Total deferred revenue stood at $894 million at the end of Q2, a 14% increase. In its Q2 earnings call, Live Nation said it had sold 83% of its planned ticket sales for the year (versus 77% last year). Revenue per fan dropped to $78.16 from $81.82 (currency movements were a problem there) while North American amphitheater per-head ancillary revenue grew 3.5%.

-- Universal Music Group’s Q2 earnings will be announced when Vivendi presents its H1 2009 results on Sept. 1.

For the Lulz

2009-08-16T22:35:13-05:00

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/3971/jaytoopmessagecopy02wt4.jpg

NYT: “You’re All Going to Fucking Die,” basically

2009-08-10T04:59:51-05:00

Swan Songs?

By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: July 31, 2009

The music industry’s deathwatch kicked off about a decade ago, but it seems the vigil could soon be over.

According to data from the Recording Industry Association of America, since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna’s 60th birthday.

The speed at which this industry is coming undone is utterly breathtaking.

First, piracy punched a big hole in it. Now music streaming — music available on demand over the Internet, free and legal — is poised to seal the deal.

The problem is that if people can get the music they want for free, why would they ever buy it, or even steal it? They won’t. According to a March study by the NPD Group, a market research group for the entertainment industry, 13- to 17-year-olds “acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007.” CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent.

And a survey of British music fans, conducted by the Leading Question/Music Ally and released last month, found that the percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music “regularly” and nearly a third listen to it every day.

This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model.

Even if they choose to buy the music, the industry has handicapped its ability to capitalize on that purchase by allowing all songs to be bought individually, apart from their albums. This once seemed like a blessing. Now it looks more like a curse.

In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good. You may have only wanted two or three songs, but you had to buy the whole 8-track, cassette or CD to get them. So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones. The resulting revenue provided a cushion for the artists and record companies to take chances and make mistakes. Single song downloads helped to kill that.

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

So it was no surprise that The Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple is working with the four largest labels to seduce people into buying more digital albums. It’s too little too late.

(Note: I wrote this column while listening to “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” the last truly great CD I ever bought. Every track is a gem. When did I buy it? 1999.)

DJ Shadow - puts his entire catalog up for sale on his own site.

2009-08-08T15:13:33-05:00

Apparently, the first major label artist to do this...and it’s 2009. (He was surprised, too.)

Source:
http://www.urb.com/permalink/6807/DJ-Shadow-Launches-New-Site-

Today, three time URB cover star DJ Shadow launched a new version of his DJShadow.com website. This wouldn’t be news worth reporting for most artists, but Shadow isn’t most artist. The site marks the first time that a major label musician will offer his entire back catalog for download directly from his web portal. Which means you can get all of Shadow’s major label releases, as well as his early MoWax recordings and lots of brand new rarities, all directly from his site. URB spoke with the DJ Hero to find out why navigating the jungle of music sales is worth the trouble.

URB: What was the inspiration behind wanting to gather all your music in one place?
DJ Shadow: The website is a funny thing for me, because you want one place on the Internet to be a source of accurate information for what you’re doing. And I suppose at a certain point you also want to be able to occassionally set the record straight on this or that. You need an official home for what you’re doing. You know, I’m not like a Trent Reznor where I interact with my fans on an hourly basis or even some other DJs that I know that take it so seriously.

I just wanted a place where I could sell music to people, but I never liked the thought that people are coming to buy a download but then they’re being sent to some another store, where I don’t have control over the ads that they’re seeing. I don’t have any control over that end of the experience even though they’re being sent there, which is how most artists on a major label, that how most people’s stores run. If you want to buy downloads of that artist on their store, you get sent to any of the other third party store fronts that are out there. So, about a year and a half ago, I just started thinking well what if I was able to sell MP3s on my own store of the music that’s owned by Universal and just license it from them instead. So essentially I’ve become my own distributor. Much like as if I was an independent label, but of course I’m not.

What about, besides the Universal stuff, will be going deeper, will you be having the Mo’Wax stuff?
Universal owns all the Mo’Wax stuff. It’s interesting because I think one of the great misunderstandings (not like there’s thousands of people sitting around thinking about this stuff) but I have noticed that some people thought I signed to Universal for the first time for the last album, when in actual fact I have been signed to Universal since ‘95. When I did the deal with Mo’Wax/A&M;, A&M;was part of Universal and then when A&M;UK closed down in ‘98 all the names got passed around in a hat of Mo’Wax artists. And Island Records said ‘we’ll take Shadow.’ In America I was on London FFRR, which was part of Universal, and then they closed that down, then I was on MCA which is part of Universal and then they closed that down then I was on Geffen for a second. And then I moved over to Universal, but somehow it got out I was signing to Universal which I thought was interesting. But in any case, all the Mo’Wax stuff is Universal anyway.

You’ll be able to get your whole discography then on your site.
Yeah, my whole discography. And also tons of stuff that you know like Solesides stuff, Quannum stuff, stuff that I’ve done over the years that was never was released. Basically anything and everything. The only thing I can’t sell on there, unless I spend a whole bunch of energy, is artists that I did remixes for or stuff that I did that appears on somebody else’s record that’s not associated with anything I’m involved in. That stuff would be a little tougher. I think there’s one or two examples where we did manage to get some stuff like that.

Is there new material that’s going to be coming down the pipe for the new site as well?
Not at the moment. There’s a lot of archival stuff. I basically went through all my DATs and my cassettes and my CD-Rs and pulled together a bunch of stuff that I don’t think anybody’s ever heard before. I found this radio mix that I did in 1988, stuff like that. I’m not selling it at a premium, I’m selling it pretty cheap. It’s just kind of like a chance for even people who think they have heard everything to be like “Oh damn, there’s like hours of stuff here I’ve never heard before.”

How hard was it to negotiate all this? You don’t hear of too many artists doing this.
I actually had no clue that it was sort of something that nobody had done, really. It wasn’t until the lawyers within Universal started saying “Well you know, we’ve never done this before so you’re gonna have to bear with us here.” ‘Cause initially there was some resistance obviously, because it was something new. When an artist starts talking, “Hey I wanna have my own store.” They’re kind of like, “I don’t know about this.” It took like a year and a half to kind of jump through the legal hoops and assure them that we’ll follow the same protocols that every other store does in terms of accounting and in terms of the way the music is delivered. And then, I was sitting there going “I don’t want DRM,” like a year ago and they were fighting and fighting and fighting. And then three months later, suddenly, nobody has DRM. And then it’s like oh, we just wasted three months.

It wasn’t like I said until they started saying, “This is the first time we’ve done this,” that we started thinking about it and researching. I told the dude that runs my site and a couple of other people, don’t be saying this is the first time unless you’re sure that it is. And what we’ve been able to figure out, it’s the first time an artist on a major label has done it. But if it has happened before, apologies to whoever did it first [laughs]. At least as far as Universal’s concerned, it’s definitely the the first time.

What about for the fans that still want the vinyl? Have you looked into the possibility of selling hard product as well, specifically vinyl or is this strictly going to be MP3?
I didn’t see much purpose in repressing stuff that came out on vinyl at some point because vinyl-heads are pretty resourceful at getting the original stuff if they need it bad enough. But what we did do is pressed up like half a dozen new vinyl projects based on the archival stuff. The physical product line called “DJ Shadow Hand-Made” which is basically taking the whole physical product thing to kind of an extreme. I mean, the vinyl is 180 gram, the jackets are this super heavy stock with a die-cut in the middle and hand stamped. It’s as much labor as you can put into a physical product without it getting ridiculous. This is not supposed to be a fetishized item either, it’s supposed to be listened to and enjoyed. For people who want the physical product, it’s there in the kind of extreme end of the quality scale that we could feasably do.

I would imagine going through all the archives would have been, on the one hand it would be interesting and nostalgic, but I’m wondering if it was also inspirational on any level for maybe upcoming projects.
It definitely helps recalibrate you mentally as far as where you come from. There was a set that I toured behind in ‘99 that was kind of a the height of turntablism… I don’t want to call it a trend, but you remember those days. If you were a DJ you had to be as aggressive with your scratching as possible because that was what was expected. And when I listen to that set now I’m like, damn that sure is a lot of scratching.

I had totally forgotten that the set was that sort of turntablisty at one point and it was interesting for me to hear. I hadn’t heard that show in probably eight or nine years. I heard it and I had to dig it off a mini disc somewhere. I think it’s actually the only recording I have of that whole tour. So there’s a lot of stuff like that in the archive where it was just by happy accident that there’s even a recording of it to begin with. It was cool to find that kind of stuff, but at the same time I don’t particularly enjoy living in the archive and I’m definitely at a point where I’m ready to move forward. Being my own archivist is not something that I aspire to, it’s just something that’s out of neccessity, out of a sense that, maybe somebody would want to hear this. But I’m anxious to kinda be finished with this phase and get back into looking foward, which is to me ultimately the whole point.

Is there a theme or a style that you see yourself going towards right now in the new stuff you’re working on?
You know, it just changes day to day, I know that’s kind of a generic answer and I wish I could be more specific. But if I gave anybody anything to hang the hat on, then when they finally get it, it’s bound to be 180 degrees the other way. In one session, I’ll feel like I want the sound to be really organic back or really kind of like back to the essence if you will. On other days, all I want to do is something I’ve never done before and push the boundaries. I mean, as long as I’m pushing my own boundaries of just making sure that I’m not covering any ground I’ve ever done before or settling into any comfortable musical easy chair, as far as my comfort zone. As long as I’m living outside of that comfort zone then I’m kind of okay with what I’m doing. So it just totally depends. I’m not out to antagonize anybody, I’m not trying to do anything extreme just for the sake of it at all. I’m just trying to keep myself interested and keep myself motivated to just sort of try and offer an alternative to what’s out there. And that’s really all I’ve ever really tried to do. When I did Endtroducing it was because I just felt that there was a sound that was not really being explored and I wanted to put it out there and let people debate it and give their thumbs up or thumbs down. And that’s kind of been the MO all along.

Is there any project coming up, not necessarily recording, but is there like a tour coming up. What are we going to see from Shadow in the end of 09 and going into 2010?
As you know, I do tend to take a bit of little time in between major albums. To answer your question, I’ll be working a lot behind the scenes, but you know I’m also a family man with two kids and a remodel of a house that’s run way too long and occupies my time occassionally. I have to fight for the time to be able to work on music. I’m working all day, it’s just not always on music.

I think that’s kind of healthy, because when I was making all the music that ended up being on Endtroducing, I was in school at the time and I’d only have like three hours a day to work on music. You kind of really have to get potent I don’t sit around for ten hours a day and noodle and doodle around. When I want to make music, I have to really fight for the time to do it. And it’s kind of always been that way, so that’s one of the reasons I’m not more prolific than I am. But hopefully, it’s also the reason that I can stand here and tell you that there’s never been anything that I’ve done that I’m not satisfied with. So it’s a mixed blessing. I am working on new stuff. Obviously at the moment I’m working on the site. And I’m also taking little digging trips as always. And seeing things and places and people, and trying to get inspiration in that way as well.

What’s inspiring you right now? Anything you’ve discovered this past month? Other artists, things you’ve discovered in your digging?
Just honesty. Honesty in the music, honesty in the recording techniques and in the way someone is expressing themselves. Like a lot of people, I think, you look around at what’s available for people to consume, and what’s available for people to mark their identity by musically. It’s not a great time right now certainly in terms of popular music. So I find myself just really latching on to things that I feel like have some truth to them and have some honesty to them and are saying something personal and saying something well and tasteful. And without giving any specific examples that’s what I would say.

TopSpin gives a look under their hood

2009-07-17T07:42:00-05:00

Two links giving a solid overview:
http://www.topspinmedia.com/products/marketing/
http://www.topspinmedia.com/products/management/

But the real gem is the checklist for artists considering reaching out to them:

http://www.topspinmedia.com/for-artists/sound-check/

The list of questions below will help you determine if you have the tools needed to execute a rock-solid direct-to-fan marketing plan.

1. Do you have 90-120 days before your next project launches?
2. Do you know the cost of goods sold for your digital and physical content?
3. Do you have accounts on social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter?
4. Do you have uncompressed WAV or AIFF files of your master recordings?
5. Do you have the means (or access to a designer) to create web-ready artwork?
6. Are you the person who grants approvals throughout the entire planning and execution process?
7. Are you able to provide accurate stats on your Web site traffic and past sales history?
8. Do you currently have marketing services, Web development, and physical distribution partners?

MJ Hype Reveals HOW BULLSHIT SALES FIGURES REALLY ARE

2009-07-15T08:54:45-05:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124760651612341407.html

In the last three years of his life, long after the release of his final original album, Michael Jackson’s career album sales took a curious leap.

For many years, Mr. Jackson’s lifetime sales tally typically was reported at 200 million albums world-wide. But in late 2006, news articles began putting the number at 750 million, a figure that became part of the popular lore as Mr. Jackson was attempting a comeback. In the last few weeks, it has popped up in obituaries and retrospectives.

So how did the sales figure nearly quadruple? A likely explanation is that a rough tally of individual songs was misinterpreted or misrepresented to reflect album sales.

Such a numerical misstep is surprisingly easy to make in the world of album sales figures, where reliable information is spotty in the U.S., and often nonexistent overseas.

“When we were asked how many albums Michael Jackson sold, we were as embarrassed as anybody,” says Adrian Strain, a spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a London-based trade group. “We had to go to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Inflated numbers aren’t unique to Mr. Jackson. The Beatles’ supposed one-billion-plus sales record also reflects an estimate of the number of songs, not albums, according to trackers of such landmarks. Other performers, such as AC/DC, Julio Iglesias and ABBA, supposedly are members of the 200 million album club, but compiled sales figures put their respective totals closer to 100 million.

The modern era of music measurement began in the U.S. in 1991, when retailers began transmitting sales reports electronically to Nielsen SoundScan. Before then, the iconic Billboard charts relied on rankings rather than absolute sales figures from record stores. The magazine didn’t know whether, at a given store, the No. 1 album outsold all others combined, or whether they were more tightly bunched, so it assumed equal spacing in assembling its chart, according to Geoff Mayfield, former director of charts at Billboard. Once SoundScan started compiling actual sales totals, Billboard used those numbers instead.

Today, SoundScan covers about 95% of music sales in the U.S., according to Chris Muratore, vice president of retail relations and research services for Nielsen Entertainment. SoundScan calculates that Mr. Jackson’s albums have sold 23 million copies since 1991—far more than Julio Iglesias’s 5.1 million, but a far cry from the Beatles’ 57.6 million.

But SoundScan doesn’t track data by album outside the U.S. and Canada, and has no numbers prior to 1991—nine years after the release of “Thriller,” Michael Jackson’s biggest hit. Also, SoundScan doesn’t include sales made to record labels’ music-club members as part of their promotional offers of, say, 10 albums for a penny. “It’s not a true consumer decision to purchase each one of those items,” Mr. Muratore says.

SoundScan isn’t the only source of sales data. In the U.S., the Recording Industry Association of America charges record labels a few hundred dollars to certify shipments of albums. The RIAA reported 61.5 million album sales by Mr. Jackson throughout his career, fewer than half the total for Garth Brooks, and only 17th in the U.S. overall.

But record labels don’t always request certification, and sales might not be tracked for more than a short period of time after an album is released. On the other hand, the certified numbers might overstate sales if stores order more albums than they are able to sell.

RIAA shipment figures also are used to determine which albums can claim coveted “gold” status (500,000 albums sold in the U.S.); or platinum (one million albums).

Outside the U.S., industry trade groups have their own methods for tracking album sales, but the data aren’t standardized or readily accessible. The IFPI, the international trade group, provides rankings and industrywide totals, not sales by a given artist or album.

Turning to the Guinness World Records won’t yield more definitive information, either. In the record book’s most recent entry on “Thriller” sales, Guinness notes that in 1982, “estimations from Sony and the Recording Industry Association of America put sales at over 55 million copies, although Jackson’s management claims that international sales have pushed the total world-wide figure to over 100 million.” Guinness concludes that “while it is impossible to verify the final global sales, there is no doubt that it remains the biggest-selling album of all time.”

With so little hard data made available by the recording industry, amateur music-data trackers have stepped in to try to fill the void. These sleuths dig through certifications, SoundScan figures and other sources to compile sales by album and artist.

One such enthusiast, Lau Ho Hoi, who works for a construction firm in Hong Kong and posts on a popular U.K. online music forum, gained attention on the music blog Hitsville last week for his posts from 2004 compiling Mr. Jackson’s sales by country. In an updated analysis, he calculated that the pop star sold 131.5 million albums world-wide, and 65.6 million singles. The total doesn’t include digital downloads, which have taken off for Mr. Jackson since his death.

Guillaume Vieira, an engineer in Paris, has compiled his own totals for his Web site, Fan of Music. By his count, Michael Jackson had sold 205.5 million albums before his death, plus many millions more in singles and downloads.

It is an impressive total, and second only to the Beatles, but far fewer than 750 million. That figure first got legs in late 2006, when Raymone Bain, a publicist for Mr. Jackson at the time, touted in a letter to Jackson fan clubs that sales had “exceeded over 750 million units.”

Units could be interpreted to mean a rough tally of the number of songs sold, not albums. But many journalists and fans interpreted the figure as albums sold, and a wildly inflated number was born.

Mr. Jackson’s record label, Sony Music, declined to share sales numbers. Ms. Bain didn’t respond to requests for comment; she sued Mr. Jackson in May after their business relationship ended. In her lawsuit, she claimed Mr. Jackson sold “over 1 billion records world-wide.”

How many people has the RIAA sued? cool ars technica investigation

2009-07-09T21:08:32-05:00

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/has-the-riaa-sued-18000-people-or-35000.ars

Just how many file-sharers has the RIAA gone after? Those in the know were widely reporting a figure just north of 30,000 cases—the RIAA never liked to provide exact numbers—but the music trade group stated in a recent court filing that the real number of people sued is only 18,000. What’s going on?

Back in 2006, an article in the Kansas City Business Journal noted that local law firm Shook Hardy & Bacon (the firm that first contacted Jammie Thomas-Rasset) would no longer be handling the RIAA’s litigation campaign. The paper quoted an “RIAA spokeswoman” as saying that the group had pursued 18,000 separate defendants. (As we’ll see later, this may have been a misunderstanding.)

In the years since, the campaign shifted gears and targeted college students more heavily than it had in the past; total numbers climbed well above those noted back in 2006 until the RIAA pulled the plug on the campaign last year.

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal interviewed EFF lawyer Fred von Lohmann about the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case, and von Lohmann noted that the RIAA had so far “targeted about 35,000 people, many of whom seemed to settle usually in the neighborhood of between $3,000-$5,000.”

The litigation campaign, which has been carried out by various law firms (it currently appears to be run by Denver-based Holme Roberts & Owen), is overseen by Matt Oppenheim, a Washington, DC lawyer who used to work for the RIAA but has now started his own practice. Oppenheim provided new information about the campaign in a declaration filed in federal court last week as part of Tanya Andersen’s class-action-status-seeking lawsuit against the recording industry.

In his declaration, Oppenheim provided some hard numbers on the campaign after consulting the master case management database. The record companies have contacted “over 18,000 people,” 12,500 of whom were identified only by filing federal Doe lawsuits and then by serving a subpoena on an ISP. The rest were notified when their ISPs forwarded warning letters from the RIAA (no subpoena needed).

Out of the 18,000 total cases, 11,000 either settled immediately or were not prosecuted for some reason by the labels. 7,000 people held out or did not respond, and the RIAA filed named federal lawsuits against them. Once that happened, most of these people also settled; recall that Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s case has been the only one to progress to an actual trial since the litigation campaign began years ago.

Not everyone went down without a fight. Oppenheim notes that “in more than 100 instances,” defendants filed counterclaims against the RIAA for things like abuse of process and civil conspiracy; the vast majority of these were tossed.

Oppenheim also had some words of warning for defendants who settled their cases with the RIAA before being named in a lawsuit, but who might now be tempted to join suits like Andersen’s (a similar class-action suit was announced by Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s lawyer earlier this summer). It’s worth quoting in full:

In cases where PNL [pre-naming letter] recipients settled before being named in individual lawsuits, the people who settled did not receive releases of claims. The Record Companies promised not to pursue any further action against setting persons, and kept those promises. In the event that a settling person were to assert a claim against the Record Companies, however—either themselves or derivatively, such as through the class action Andersen seeks to pursue on their behalf—the Record Companies would likely defend the action by demonstrating that these claimants infringed, and thus cannot claim “abuse of process” or any of the other torts Ms. Andersen asserts. Upon demonstrating this infringement in court, the Record Companies would have the legal right to damages far in excess of prior settlement payments. Indeed, in the overwhelming number of instances, the settlement amounts were only a fraction of the minimum statutory damages that would have been due had the case actually been litigated.

In other words, don’t join the lawsuit or you could end up on the hook for far more money.

A matter of perspective

So how to explain the discrepancy in the numbers? Has the RIAA contacted 18,000 people or 35,000?

The answer, according to an RIAA spokeswoman, is that both numbers are true in their own way. The 18,000 figure is the number of unique individuals contacted during the course of the campaign, but of course many of these individuals were sued twice—first as Does, and later as named defendants once their identities had been revealed by the ISP. “We have filed more than 30,000 suits,” the RIAA tells Ars, “which include both named and Doe suits.”

questlove interview from ‘03

2009-06-16T10:58:35-05:00

THE BELIEVER: So you have a theory that black people make better music when Republicans are in office. Explain the theory and how it’s playing out now, in the midst of this regime—I mean, administration.

AHMIR THOMPSON: My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there’s a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop. I think had Carter and then Mondale won, or if Jesse [Jackson] were President from ’84 to ’88, hiphop wouldn’t have been the same. Hiphop wouldn’t have existed. I think you would have more black Tom Waitses. Marsalis would be goin double platinum. There would be more black Joni Mitchells. [Gets impish grin.] The Roots would sell ten million.

BLVR: You think that if the Democrats, instead of Reagan and Bush, were running America in the eighties, then hiphop would not have been invented.

AT: Probably, but it would depend on who was replacing them. I don’t know if Gary Hart really had a special place in black people’s hearts.

BLVR: But hiphop was already being built as early as 1972, and some even say ’69.

AT: As a result of Nixon. But you have to understand, it’s not just him being there, but what was allowed to go on. I really doubt that if Jesse Jackson had become president in 1984, he would’ve let the crack epidemic flood in, Niagara Falls–esque, in the ghettos. It’s such blasphemy to say this, but crack is responsible for the hiphop movement. It’s a direct result. The politically correct way of saying it is that Reagan’s neglect of the inner city is responsible for hiphop. Hiphop is created thanks to the conditions that crack set: easy money but a lot of work, the violence involved, the stories it produced—crack helped birth hiphop. Now, I’m part conspiracy theorist, because you can’t develop something that dangerous and [have] it not be planned. I don’t think crack happened by accident.

BLVR: Don’t be p.c. Spit it out. You’re saying the government pushed crack on us, those of us in the inner cities in New York, L.A., Detroit, D.C., and so on.

AT: Yes, and as a result created the lifestyle in which the wordsmiths and the turntablists and the great African tradition—created hiphop.

BLVR: But when you say crack is partly responsible for hiphop, what exactly are you talking about? More money in the community in the pockets of young dealers? A higher level of determination in certain people because of the climate on the street? Great stories to tell?

AT: First of all, there’s upstart money. Eazy-E wouldn’t have developed Ruthless Records if it weren’t for the crack game. So Dr. Dre would’ve just been a Prince clone. One of the greatest works of art, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back [by Public Enemy], would’ve never got made. Half the narratives of hiphop would’ve been erased, the street cred, the danger, so hiphop would’ve been more of a jazz thing with virtuoso rhyming, and it could’ve easily faded away.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200308/?read=interview_thompson

I think the part about d’angelo is pretty interesting too

interview from ‘05
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/video-archive/lectures/uestlove__phrenology_of_hip_hop