Just kicking back, doing a little music biz math tonight.
Let’s break this down.
The first week out the new Guns und Roses album “Chinese Democracy” sold 260,000 and change.
The second week, the new Guns N’ Roses album, “Chinese Democracy” sold roughly 80,000 copies.
Before all of this, Best Buy, in exchange for exclusive retail rights, bought 1.5 Million copies of “Chinese Democracy”, up front, at the wholesale price of $9.00 a pop.
The Man…is not going to keep Axl down.
Axl Rose, You Rock!
I don’t know that there is a more thankless job in the music biz than that of the lowly song plugger.
From Topix.
Pop star turned country singer Jessica Simpson told a crowd during her Grand Ole Opry debut that she burst into tears the first times she heard the song “Remember That” and knew God wanted her to sing it.
Good to see the The Almighty has thrown his hat in to the ring.
Big Buzzzzz about TechCrunch as they announce: We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.
Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.
Wow! Sounds Great! But Wait! How is this going to affect the music biz?
My Google Reader is already thick with it. Bruce Warila at Music Think Tank asks; Could The TechCrunch Tablet Be The Final Nail In The Music Sales Coffin?
Imagine every kid carrying one of these around in his or her backpack. Full screen browsing! Go to any music 2.0 site and interact with the full kit; not the watered down version you experience on a smart phone; you get it all: commenting, friends, music players, blogs, schedules, videos, sharing, streaming, etc. What do you need to buy or own music for?
What to do? What to do!!?? How will a musician be able to make a buck? Bruce has the answer.
Music will not be your primary product; it will be a component of your brand. Imagine your blog filling the screen above. It’s imperative that you build your own brand, or become part of a boutique brand on the Internet.
Thats right, the “B” Word. It’s all about branding from here on out kids. Music will not be your primary product, gotta build your brand. Develop your brand.
Screw that. Fuck a bunch of branding. I’m sick of hearing it.
Everyone is worrying about how everything is going to impact the music business, How everything is going to affect commerce.
I’m worried about how all of this change is going to affect music. If music isn’t going to be the primary product, if it’s just going to be a component of the “brand” then, what we will have is a bunch of entertaining bloggers not, musicians.
All of this stuff is going to wash out one way or the other.
One Way:
Music will be paid for by a monthly tax, imposed by governments, or a monthly fee, imposed by ISP’s. All the music ever released will be available to consumers. All the money will go into a convoluted pool and divvied up by some convoluted system which will give big operators unfair advantages and is subject to be gamed by cheaters. But, musicians who are truly independent and, doing quality work, will be given some incentive to go on.
The Other
Nobody gets paid for music ever again, and creative musicians take their collective ball and go home.
It’s going to go One Way not The Other. But, it’s going to take a while. Musicians need to concentrate on music. All of this branding stuff is overrated. It’s for the Radioheads of the world. I’m not saying musicians shouldn’t blog. They should, it’s fun. And, it may develop a “brand” a little bit. But, the best thing musician can do, is pick up the instrument and play, write a song, create something interesting. That’s the best thing you can do for your brand.
Recent Comments