Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Lucky Old Sun, the new album by party-happy country singer Kenny Chensey, which comes out in non-deluxe form tomorrow:
In the face of tough economic times and not very many big-ticket shows, the concert industry actually did better this summer than it did in 2007! Well, if you only look at one measure of the industry, anyway. Billboard reports that overall concert grosses from May 1 to Labor Day were $1 billion, which is up 5% from $948.5 million in 2007. Hooray! More money! But lurking underneath those higher numbers is a slightly more troubling statistic–overall attendance was actually down 4% year-to-year, from 19.5 million tickets sold in 2007 to 18.7 million sold this year. (And that doesn’t even count the number of people who didn’t go to shows that they’d already bought tickets for because the price of gas was too high.) So basically that difference was made up by higher ticket prices, which will probably only be driven upward as a result of these sorta-happy numbers and ever-weakening consumer confidence. The No. 1 ticket last summer: Kenny Chesney, thanks to his filling the “concert-as-party” void left by the lack of a Jimmy Buffett summer jaunt. The 10 highest-grossing tours are after the jump–how many did you attend?
Congratulations, world! You somehow made it all the way to Oct. 1, 2008, which means one thing: It’s time for Rocktober to start. How will you celebrate? Some people are linking to YouTubes of Who songs. Others are hoping that you’ll have a hankering to hear the Divinyls and Foreigner within the same span of time. One guy who got the coveted domain name “rocktober.com” is even saying that we should bring back Metallica Monday, although I know of a few people who might disagree with that idea. Which is why I have five Rocktober-celebration suggestions of my own, all of which are located after the jump.
Everyone who thinks “hey, don’t worry, bands and labels can make up all that money lost from dropping-like-a-stone CD sales on the road”–and even people who have some semblance of sense–should read this Oregonian piece on the effects of high gas prices on touring bands, which contains factoids… More »
Everyone who thinks “hey, don’t worry, bands and labels can make up all that money lost from dropping-like-a-stone CD sales on the road”–and even people who have some semblance of sense–should read this Oregonian piece on the effects of high gas prices on touring bands, which contains factoids… More »
Sure, Kenny Chesney may have won his fourth straight Entertainer Of The Year Award at last night’s Academy of Country Music Awards, but he’s not all that happy with it! Why? Because he feels like the newly introduced element of fan voting has turned the award “into a sweepstakes to see who can push people’s buttons the hardest on the Internet,” instead of recognition from the winner’s peers. If he’d added in “and a gimmick to cheaply drive up traffic to whatever Web site is hosting the awards for future purposes of advertising pitches,” I would be in 100% agreement with him!
The nominees for the Academy of Country Music Awards were announced this morning, and Kenny Chesney was the big winner, scoring 12 nominations including nods for Entertainer of the Year and Top Male Vocalist. Other big nominees include Rodney Atkins (six), Brad Paisley (four), and Idolator fave Miranda Lambert (three); Kelly Clarkson also got a nod for the version of “Because Of You” that she performed with Reba McEntire. (Click the photo of Chesney for the full slate of nominees.) [Official site / Photo: AP]
So as we noted yesterday, Kanye West’s Graduation won the SoundScan battle this week, with 957,000 people across the U.S. so inspired to maybe have a hand in crushing the career of 50 Cent that they actually went out to their local music merchants and plunked down money for West’s third album. The high numbers this week for the debuting Graduation, Curtis (691,000 copies sold), and Kenny Chesney’s Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates (387,000) weren’t, however, enough to rescue the week’s overall sales tallies from the crapper; the 9.16 million albums sold last week is, in fact, down 9% year-to-year.
Hey everyone, do you finally want to know who won the year’s biggest non-issue, the battle royale between two overgrown rapping children for the all-but-devalued Billboard No. 1 spot? A hint: even if you’re a sourpussed crank who’s been talking shit about this media-circus-cum-sales-“beef” from jump, you’ll probably still be happy. Keep in mind, however, that these are strictly preliminary numbers until tomorrow:
