— In an LA Times article about the Canadian band Metric, a few interesting facts are given about the band’s latest album. “Fantasies” has sold 9,000 digital albums in its first three weeks of release, and has sold an additional 15,000 in other territories. Metric used Topspin Media for sales and marketing at its Web site, allowed fans to stream the album a full month before its release and had a partnership with iTunes. Although the album was self-released (the CD is being distributed by Redeye), a $50,000 loan from Canada’s FACTOR funded its recording. Said the band’s co-manager, “Talking gross numbers that come directly to the band, we have made more money already than we have on the last record in four years.” (LA Times)
— Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, talks music, file-sharing and the over-supply of music with The Register. “People pay a lot to learn how to play music and it’s ridiculous to expect people to make money off it. Normally if you want to make money you do something no one wants to do. ” (The Register)
— Last.fm has introduced its €3-per-month fee for its radio service in all countries except the U.S., the U.K. and Germany. Those three countries, says Last.fm, are good enough markets for advertising revenues that users can still get its radio service for free. (Music Ally)
— Trans World Entertainment filed its annual report with the SEC last week. It makes for good reading if you have the time. If not, this sums it up: music accounted for 46% of sales in 2006, 39.1% in 2007 and 35.4% in 2008. The company’s unit CD sales slid 28% in 2008, a deeper drop than the overall market decrease of 20%. (10K Filing)
— AOL is tooting its horn after its page views rose 13% to 6.4 billion in March 2009. It tends to get less respect than other music sites, but AOL Music is a dominant force. The site is the most visited music site with over 20 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore Media Matrix data. The company’s publishing division, Media Glow, plans to launch 30 new sites in 2009. Last month, AOL Music launched the metal blog NoiseCreep. That site joins a music portfolio of Spinner (Technorati rank: 54), country site The Boot (Technorati rank: 632) and hip hop site The Boom Box (Technorati rank: 1,411). As a point of comparison, popular music blog Stereogum has a Technorati rank of 68. (Press release)
— Former MCA Nashville exec David Haley just announced the launch of Edgehill Music and Media, a company that seeks to improve upon traditional label promotion by “combining traditional airplay promotion and the new social media outlets.” (Music Row)
— Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Loaded) blogged about social media, the vinyl resurgence and terrestrial radio playlists. “Bands have figured out that while yes, they won’t sell as many records because of illegal digital downloading, these same bands can get more exposure from MySpace, YouTube, and other Internet means of social networking. More visibility in the ether can mean more people at your show buying your T-shirts and maybe even your CD (I have noticed that fans WILL buy your music at a venue. Maybe it is the excitement that is generated by the live show that pushes the fan to further support the artist. I dunno). (Seattle Weeky)
