The date for Them Crooked Vultures debut album is creeping up and the bands sexy promotion campaign continues in the style of generosity. iTunes is host to a free download from the band named “Mind Eraser, No Chaser”.
The first official release was the the single that came out last week, “New Fang”. The free track is another little riff machine that was unleashed at the bands short burst of dates in the US and Europe this summer. With catchy guitar and an even catchier chorus, fingers crossed the album is consistent. TCV will begin a tour of the west coast (US) starting mid November, with the self titled album being released on the same day, the 17th.
RouteNote.com like to think that we provide a good service to the public with most things music. Whether you need a super platform to give yourself a boost as an artist or just advice on music in general. We have decided though to branch out as far as marriage advice, but in our own special way. After trawling thorough the dozens and dozens of songs that would all be sound advice coming from a best man of whoever to advise you to leave out of your (so her’s) special day! In no particular order, and we would love some feedback and some of your suggestions, 10 songs that you should not have played at your wedding. RouteNote.com would like to explain that it is Pro wedding, this is just for fun.
Highway To Hell – AC/DC. The song sold over 500,000 copies as a single, but the bride wouldn’t find the funny side if she had to come down the isle to it, but I could be wrong.
Girls - Motley Crue. Naughty, naughty. You only have eyes for your special someone now, remember!
U.G.L.Y – Daphne & Celeste. Just as rubbish a song as it is mean. This versatile entry can be used to insult both the groom by the bride or vice-verser, everybody win! Besides, even if your thinking it, don’t say it till you get home at least!
Rape Me – Nirvana. Do I actually need to explain why with this in inappropriate! One of the better songs on the list though, but still, that’s no excuse.
D.I.V.O.R.C.E. – Loretta Lynn. Come on chin up, that’s just not very optimistic now is it? Besides, honeymoons are fun!
Gold-digger – Kanye West. Pre-nups at the ready!
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling - Righteous Brothers. A classic, released in 1965, the brothers were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame last year. Still as true today as it ever was……….
She Hates Me – Puddle Of Mud. A nice kick in the balls way of accusing the wife of cheating.
Everyday I Love You Less And Less – Kaiser Chiefs. Having regrets are we? Honesty is the best policy you reckon? I’ll give that one some thought.
I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor. A favourite with the ladies. I don’t need a man, I don’t need a man, meme meee, meme meee! Its a song about a surviving a breakup FOR GODS SAKE. That’s just not what the day is about now is it.
Last nights mercury prize winner Speech Debelle snatched the award of the back of her album, “Speech Therapy”, which sold no more than 3000 copies.
Other Competitors for the music prize were, Kasabian, Glasvegas, The Horrors, La Roux and bookies favorites Florence and The Machine. Her debut album was released last may and was voted the best of this years short list, credited by a panel of respected executives, journalists and musicians including last years winners Elbow. Debelle has won herself a dowry of £20,000 and has hinted at going to the US for some some live dates. Dates and downloads are available at tourdates.co.uk.
Debell is the first act to win the Mercury Music Award who is not considered “indy” for the last 6 years after Dizzie Rascal won it in 2003. She looks well on her way to being able to fill the void left by Ninah Cherry and Miss Dynamite for fans of the genre. Below is her post-victory moments. Her music is currently free for download here.
As well as providing a list of super songs we think you should listen to, links have been provided where possible (if not then a live video or something) so you can set about expanding your mind. 10 new and completely different songs for every musical taste, in no particular order. Enjoy.
Finally we have some (what seem like actually quite reliable) dates for a tour from Them Crooked Vultures. The tour dates are nice and fair with dates for the UK and the USA.
The super-group will embark on their first US tour which begins at the beginning of October and contains a total of nine sets, including a recently knocked up set at the Austin City Limits Festival along side The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Kings Of Leon. December the 10th sees the band begin their short tour of the UK beginning in Plymouth and ending in London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo. Details though of the bands album releases are still in up in the air (with even less news about downloads), but the rock collective are treating the fans to quite a regular amount of promos and video leaks on places like YouTube with even less on their website, you can buy t-shirts though for around $25. Below is an accurate account of the understood dates: (click here for tickets)
Oct. 1: Austin, (Stubbs)
Oct. 2: Austin, (Austin City Limits)
Oct. 5: Nashville, (War Memorial)
Oct. 6: Columbus, (LC Pavilion)
Oct. 8: Detroit, (The Fillmore)
Oct. 9: Toronto, (Sound Academy)
Oct. 11: Boston, (House of Blues)
Oct. 12: Philadelphia, (Electric Factory)
Oct. 14: Washington, (9:30 Club)
Dec. 10: Plymouth, UK (Pavilions)
Dec. 11: Portsmouth, UK (Guildhall)
Dec. 13: Blackpool, UK (Empress Ballroom)
Dec. 14: Birmingham, UK (O2 Academy)
Dec. 15: Edinburgh, UK (O2 Academy)
Dec. 17: London, UK (HMV Hammersmith Apollo)
7Digital and Spotify have announced a new partnership that will see 7Digital purchasing links in the Spotify platform. This partnership is aimed to help Spotify increase revenues in this very difficult economic situation that is heavily affecting online advertising revenues.
Beginning with the UK, France, Spain and Germany, the deal enables Spotify users to purchase 320kbps MP3 downloads from 7Digital’s 6M track catalog along with a selection of FLAC downloads. Sweden, Norway and Finland will follow in a few weeks. In the future, users will be able to purchase playlists that have been created within Spotify at a discounted price. Future improvements will include closer integration including one click downloads.
The Spotify deal follows a similar 7Digital partnership with open source media player Songbird using 7digital’s API which allows integration with 7digital’s catalog and commissions on sales.
Nokia has announced that it will be launching it “Comes with Music” offering in Italy, Sweden and Mexico in the coming months. Nokia initially launched their Comes With Music service in the UK and Singapore and its already announced it will launch in Australia later this month.
The company has also announced three new music phones in its XpressMusic range: the 5730, 5330 and 5030. The first two of those will be Comes With Music handsets in selected markets.
Music Ally has reported that over 445,000 people illegally downloaded the new U2 album. All these downloaded were alleged to happen between the 18th of February till the 3rd of March from BitTorrent sites.
The chart supplied by the company shows the spike in downloads following the album’s leak in February, apparently due to it being accidentally made available for sale on an Australian digital music store ahead of its official release on 2nd March.
The debate is always would these people have purchased the album if it wasn’t leaked on BitTorrent clients? No one can really answer that question, but I’m sure that certain sales would have happened because of this.
Overall this does make me think that the claims of the Pirate Bay in the last couple weeks that “80 percent of all their torrents are legal”, cant be true.
A lot of people get in touch with us to ask how many digital stores we distribute music to, and what proportion of the digital music market they represent. We also hear comments on the relatively small number of people we deal with in comparison to the huge lists of partners at some of our competitors, e.g. CDbaby,Emubands, IODA…(without mentioning the duplication in the last two).
The simple truth is that while a long list of digital music stores might look good, beyond the top 3 or 4 retailers it makes very little difference to overall sales how many your music’s in. It’s fairly common knowledge that iTunes is the biggest player in the market, but the scale of their dominance is pretty staggering. Neilsen (the ratings and market reporting firm) reports total US music sales of 1,513 million units in 2008, with 1070 million of those sales being digital downloads. That’s a billion digital music downloads across the entire US.
In 2008, across all territories, iTunes sold more than Two Billion tracks.
Apple iTunes Store Music Sales
Date
Tracks Sold (Millions)
01/08/2004
100
16/12/2004
200
02/03/2005
300
10/05/2005
400
18/07/2005
500
10/01/2006
850
23/02/2006
1,000
12/09/2006
1,500
10/01/2007
2,000
09/04/2007
2,500
31/07/2007
3,000
15/01/2008
4,000
19/06/2008
5,000
06/01/2009
6,000
Excuse the horrid old excel graph, I’m still running Office ‘03…
It’s difficult to get a believable estimate for the size of the global digital music market, but given that the USA is the biggest single economy by a long way (the whole of the EU only just beats it in the CIA factbook at $14.98 trillion to $14.58 trillion), you begin to get a picture of how much of a monopoly iTunes has. Their competitors are of a different order: Amazon weighed in at 27 million digital tracks sold in the first six months of 2008, and the CEO of eMusic (David Pakman) estimated that Amazon have got about 4%-5% of the US music market, which going from Neilsen’s estimates puts them at about 48,150,000 tracks annually. Pakman also claims an approx. 10%-15% market share for eMusic, with 7 million downloads sold monthly (7*12 = 84).
By browsing eMusic’s sales milestone press releases, you can plot a rough course for their sales:
eMusic Digital Music Sales
Date
Tracks Sold (Millions)
01/09/2004
0
01/12/2004
3
01/12/2006
100
25/09/2007
160
14/04/2008
200
20/11/2008
250
I’ll spare you another ugly graph. eMusic has sold 250 million tracks since it’s relaunch in 2004, and Amazon’s only been going for about a year now, 300 million tracks let’s say, which pales beside iTunes’ 6 billion total sales.
One can argue with the estimates, but the main thrust of my argument is hopefully becoming clear. A conservative 15% market share between Amazon and eMusic, along with iTunes’ >80% doesn’t leave more than 5% for any other players in the USA: with just those three selling your music for you online, you’ve got 95% of the market covered. It’s not that the remaining 5% isn’t worth catering to, but the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and customers in the last few percentiles get harder and harder to chase down, especially given the plethora of blossoming and failing little music shops that appear and dissappear. We concentrate our efforts on the vendors that matter.
P.S.
The controversial bulk of music discovery and consumption in the electronic wilderness, outside the paid-for enclosure, is happening on torrent sites like the embattled Pirate Bay, and the more respectable Limewire and Mininova, and promoting RouteNote artists on these channels is something we’re looking into. Ubiquitous innovator Trent Reznor or NIN positively encourages people to download his music from P2P networks, in order to drive sales of his ‘premium’ paid for content.
Have you ever wondered how much iTunes account for digital sales online? One of our competitors CD Baby has published their 2008 results which shows that iTunes currently accounts for over 82% of their total digital revenues. This makes me wonder why artists are really keen to get their music in as many places as possible, instead of just focusing on the top retail points and building a base around them and their users.
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