Amid sales slump, artists find ‘more ways to monetize music’
Album sales continue to slide, and once-booming digital sales are flat, but there are bright footnotes in the recording industry’s gloomy 2010 midyear sales summary.
Consumers bought 148.4 million albums (both physical product and downloadable delivery) through June 27, down 11% from the 166 million sold to this point a year ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“With so many different options in terms of how consumers obtain and experience music, albums aren’t the only game in town anymore,” says Keith Caulfield, Billboard chart analyst. “Because the album was the dominant format for decades, people became accustomed to quoting album sales as an indicator of how well the music industry was faring.

“Now there are multiple ways of measuring music’s popularity and sales. It’s hard to keep tabs on how much money Lady Gaga is earning from having her songs in Glee. There are so many more ways to monetize music. Albums don’t tell the whole story.”
Flattening digital sales might be explained by dwindling new adopters and a widening mobile-device landscape.

Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 is second, trailed by Sade’s Soldier of Love and Lady Gaga’s The Fame. Eminem’sRecovery, which sold 741,000 copies its first week, will move into fifth place with second-week sales projected to push his total past 1 million.

Eminem had “the strongest first-week showing in 20 months,” Grein says. “I was starting to think we wouldn’t see those kind of numbers again. And in just three weeks (of sales), Drake will be over 700,000 and rank No. 10 for the year. Those are encouraging numbers.”
Hip-hop also plays a leading role in several of the year’s biggest-selling songs. Of the top 20, 11 are collaborations, most with rappers, “which shows how ingrained that sound has become in popular music,” Grein says.B.o.B’s Nothin’ On You featuring Bruno Mars or Bieber’s Baby featuring Ludacris “would not have been as successful without the rap element. Hip-hop gave them an edge in the current market. Even Katy Perry’sCalifornia Gurls works better with Snoop Dogg’s rap.”

Top songs so far, in descending order: Train’s Hey, Soul Sister, Black Eyed Peas‘ Imma Be, Lady Antebellum’sNeed You Now, Ke$ha’s TiK ToK and Usher’s OMG.
Pop’s dominance in the top five “make sense, since young fans are the ones buying songs,” Grein says.

Source: USA Today

excerpt from Strategic Planning For The Small Business by Craig S. Rice

Books jump into my hands at the right time.  While cruising the books for sale shelf at the local library, the above book jumped into my hands.  Best value for 25cents.  I also bought a book of poetry to send to two songwriters who are getting married tomorrow.  But back to business. 

Life is a business you know.  Each of us is our product that we sell.  We sell our time we sell our skills.  Some of you are songwriters and sell your songs, your performances, your art.  So it is good to have a plan of what you want to get in return, when you’d like to get it and how you will get it.  Here’s the excerpt:

“You may be wondering, “What does a business plan do for me?”  You are asking a sensible question that deserves an answer.  You get six strong benefits.

First - A plan favorable impresses your key people.  Your investors, owners, bankers, and employees often will say, “I like a person who has a good plan worked out!”  Investors are more willing to put in funds - and employees will invest more of their time, effort, and enthusiasm.  Programs motivate, and a person with a careful plan often has a certain attraction and influence.

Second - A plan increases your income.  Famous consultant Peter Drucker says, “What gets planned, gets done.”  So if you build a good, sensible program for increasing your sales and profits, you have a much better chance that those profits will come to you than you would if you had no such plan.

Third - A plan saves you time, work, and stress - and that’s not all bad.  You avoid wasted action, mistakes, and lost money.  The plan spreads and delegates the load.  (Why should you do it all?)  Plus, a plan anticipates problems and turns them into advantages before they hit you.  So it cuts your stress.  Good planners get more fun out of life.

Fourth - A plan applies your strengths, skills, abilities, interests.  Everyone and every company has talents.  Yet these are sometimes unrecognized, unappreciated, and under-employed, even though these very things are the activities that people most enjoy doing, and often will generate the most results per day or week.  A good plan helps find those valuable resources and applies them in contructive ways - like making money.

Fifth - A plan gives you a track to run on.  A railroad train, racing car, or running athlete moves better, more efficiently, more effectively, when on a track.  All can see where they are, where they are going, and the direction they want to take.  And a track is usually smoother than fields, streams, and woods.  Your route is well laid out.  Now you can concentrate on your own progress, speed, excelling over competitors and winning, rather than getting past every aggravating puddle, rock, and rut in the road.

Sixth - A plan sets priorities.  This can be very important and mighty handy in these days of limited resources and modest budgets.  We simply can’t afford to do everything.  Some things must be postponed.

But other projects are essential.  And even among these preferred projects, not everything can be done at once.  With a plan, you know what to do first and what’s coming next.  It not only saves you from unpleasant surprises, but lets you focus all your skill on each step, so you are more likely to succeed.  And by taking things one at a time, not in one horrendous load, your stress factor is much lower.  Life is hard, by the yard - but life’s a cinch, by the inch.”

He goes on to give “… one of the best and easiest kinds of plans …” which has only four steps.  I’ll post that next week.  Here’s to good planning!!!  Cheers+