January 16, 2012
-Palo Alto, CA (TMD News)
In a surprising move, Google, (NASDAQ:GOOG) the country's largest generator of ad revenue, (their earnings for Q3 2011 were $9.72 billion) announced today that it would no longer be charging for ads through their successful "ad sense" and "adwords" programs, but would instead be giving away ad space for free and looking to Tee Shirt sales to generate all future income.
A spokesperson for Google, Hans Vet Allt, explained the change, "This is the business model that has been so successful for the music industry for a number of years now, and our marketing data indicates that individual consumers, small business and corporations would rather pay for Tee Shirts over any other good or service.” The statement released by Google also noted that the company believes that Tee Shirt sales are, “The future of all monetary transactions."
Vet Allt went on to announce that after Google finishes destroying SOPA and PIPA it would lobby Washington D.C. hard to abolish the Federal Reserve and replace it with Old Navy, turning the U.S into a merch based economy.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Break It Down. Music Sales in 2011
Soundscan released their 2011 numbers for music sales. As we saw earlier, the first two quarters of the year saw a boom in music purchases and although sales lost some of their momentum during the last half of the year, 2011 was the first year since 2004 to see growth in album purchases from the previous year.
Before we go through the numbers, it is worth restating that TMD is primarily written for musicians and listeners of smaller genre categories. Independent music. As we will see, the major labels always claim the top prizes and determine the direction that the rest of us follow, if we can. A big IF.
The Good News: Barely
The good news is that album sales in the US grew a whooping 1.3%. Not much, but better than the landslide that has been happening for most of the 2000’s.
As always, the main forces behind these numbers are due to a handful of albums. This year there were only 13 albums that sold 1 million units or more. Led by Adele’s “21”. Those 13 albums make up only 0.0169% of the 78,875 newly released albums Soundscan counted for 2011. So for Independent musicians the story is pretty much the same. Only artists on labels can make it big, and realistically, even for those artists, the odds are still slim to none.
Before we go through the numbers, it is worth restating that TMD is primarily written for musicians and listeners of smaller genre categories. Independent music. As we will see, the major labels always claim the top prizes and determine the direction that the rest of us follow, if we can. A big IF.
The Good News: Barely
The good news is that album sales in the US grew a whooping 1.3%. Not much, but better than the landslide that has been happening for most of the 2000’s.
As always, the main forces behind these numbers are due to a handful of albums. This year there were only 13 albums that sold 1 million units or more. Led by Adele’s “21”. Those 13 albums make up only 0.0169% of the 78,875 newly released albums Soundscan counted for 2011. So for Independent musicians the story is pretty much the same. Only artists on labels can make it big, and realistically, even for those artists, the odds are still slim to none.
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