File under “scenarios that I kind of wished had played out in real time”: “Apple had reportedly been sufficiently annoyed by [Warner Music Group’s decision to pull Estelle’s Shine from the iTunes Store] that it threatened to retaliate by pulling all mentions of WMG product from the various splash… More »
In the wake of Kid Rock finding success by holding his album back from iTunes while having a fairly big radio hit, Kid’s label Atlantic Records decided to experiment with the Kid’s strategy, pulling the British singer Estelle’s album Shine from the iTunes Store two weeks ago. The move, which was ostensibly made in order to boost sales of the album after the success of its lead single, the Kanye West-assisted “American Boy,” resulted in sales of the album dropping 16%, then experiencing a 9% gain last week. Meanwhile, “Boy” plummeted to No. 57 on the Hot 100 last week; there, it suffered the indignity of being beat out by its own inferior insta-cover, which had the advantage of being available on the store. Perhaps that was just embarrassing enough for Atlantic to restore the album on iTunes; yesterday when I opened up the online-music destination, there was a huge ad for Shine in the middle of the store’s splash page.
Yesterday’s announcement of new iPods and a new version of iTunes revealed one biggish innovation on Apple’s part: Genius, which is Apple’s attempt at integrating last.fm/Pandora-like “recommendation” functionality into the music player. So far, it seems a bit imperfect to me: It’s claiming that I’m “missing” songs that are next in line on my playlist; and its recommendations get a bit more dicey the further your listening habits stray from iTunes’ best-sellers list. Kevin Maney at Portfolio wonders if the meh-ness of the products Apple unveiled yesterday is a sign that Apple has hit the wall, innovation-wise, in music, but Marc Cohen at Ad-Supported Music Central takes his argument one further, saying that the whole industry is in the doldrums, at least on the business side.
The above photo of the new line of iPod Nanos brought out this comment from Maura: “This is what happens when you’re the type of person who arranges your CDs by color.” I wondered if I could do any better, especially because the Calvin Harris selection was a particular affront.
Since I couldn’t make it up to San Francisco to see whatever Steve Jobs wants to dole out to his music-listening public in person (mostly because I wasn’t invited), here’s an open thread in which we can comment on the revelations let loose by Steve Jobs at today’s “Apple: Let’s Rock” event. More »
I applaud new ideas. When you spend time trying to find interesting things to comment on for a music blog, anything that might appear to be innovative provides a brief moment of excitement. But when every corporate entity on earth tries to find a way to make some cash from the residuals of the iTunes empire, it’s inevitable that some ideas are, frankly, better than others.
Last Friday, one of the regular commenters on my “100 and Single” column poured cold water all over my prediction that Estelle’s “American Boy” might finally creep into the U.S. Top 10. Noted regular reader ukidol, “Estelle’s song has been removed from iTunes since the start of the week, so she’ll drop sharply in the next chart. Think they’re hoping for a Kid Rock-style album boost.”
We won’t find out how Estelle fared until the new Hot 100 appears later today, but yesterday’s release of SoundScan figures bears out ukidol’s prediction. “American Boy,” which the prior week was the sixth-best selling digital song in the country, fell to 64th, as its sales took a 78% tumble from 86,700 copies to 19,100 copies. (Presumably, virtually all of those 19,100 copies sold in the first day or two of the tracking week before the song got pulled from iTunes.)
As of last week, “American Boy” was at No. 11 on the big chart. While the radio half of the Hot 100’s sales-plus-airplay formulation might keep the song from falling out of the Top 40, no amount of radio growth will keep it from dropping at least a double-digit number of slots–if not this week, then the next.
The iTunes Store has been restored to service in China–minus the compilation Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace, thanks to its compilers’ suggestions that a number of Olympic athletes had downloaded the album in protest. The Chinese government has not offered any comment. More »
Like the Timex Social Club, I spend a lot of time lamenting the rumors that surround me every day. How do they get started? And where do they get crazy? In Truthmongerer, I’ll try to suss out the kernels of truth in the rumors that are taking up airspace in gossip columns, blogs, and our tips inbox.
THE RUMOR: iTunes is going to launch a subscription site called iTunes Unlimited as soon as October. And access to as many downloads as you like will only cost $129.99 for the whole year!
TRUTH THRESHOLD: 7.5%.
Kid Rock has refused to put his Warren Zevon/Lynyrd Skynyrd homage “All Summer Long” on the iTunes Store as an a la carte download, and it’s paid off for him in a few ways: This week, his album Rock N Roll Jesus (which features the track) hit the double-platinum mark, and he’s gotten a ton of… More »
