Kollector's Blog

13 Mar

Published by jean-marc,

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General

charts, music industry

After posting yesterday this picture of two mugs, one with The Beatles and the other one being One Direction, the question arose to who's actually buying music, who was buying it back in the sixties, and who sends One Direction to the charts now ? Of course, Beatles video show histeric young kids at concerts but today's histeric crowds buying Beyonce and One Direction are 12, not 16 or 17 like the ol' films show...Music buying people have extended both in younger age kids and older adults classes.

A definitive answer actually isn't easy to find altho it's possible to find multiple answers to multiple questions but still, the charts are seeing two One Direction's albums in the 2012 Top Ten Best Selling albums. 2008 RIAA demographics show that 44,7% of music buyers are above 40 years old while only 28,3 % are below 25 years old. So, the answer might be that younger audiences and music buyers are more focused in what they buy (charts oriented music) when older audiences spread their acquisitions on a much larger base of music. The problem is also to be able to decipher when parents buy music to their kids with their credit cards: i told ya the situation was blurred and...

25 Feb

Is adding Youtube to the charts a good...

Published by jean-marc,

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charts, music industry

By now, everyone and their neighbour know about "Harlem Shake" and how that phenomenom only took a single month between the first video that sparked it all and getting at the top of the Billboard charts is truly fascinating. The phenomenom is also interesting as a new change in how charts are being calculated promises to send more novelty records at the top of the charts, somehow distabilizing the usual food chain of hits.

So, what happened ? Basically, Baauer released the track on a free website in june 2012. There wasn't even a video, or in fact there was one that was so bad the label shelved it.

It all went bezerk when Dizasta Music youtubed a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJiSSAMNWw) on January 30th.

This video, the original video of the phenomenon, went viral (its viewings exploded) on February 2nd.

On February 6th, video memes stated to proliferate (there are thousands of Harlem Shake memes...) and to this day, more than 70 video remixes have more than 1 MILLION views EACH.

On Feb 11th, the phenomenom was global and gained main news coverage on Feb 14th.

Where...

05 Sep

Are the album charts worth anything...

Published by jean-marc,

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charts, music industry

One of the collateral damages of online sales of music per track is in fact the factual death of the album...

What was once a container (the album) for ten songs or so that would include a couple of singles is , more than ever before, these days rejected by buyers as the crowd buys now on a track-per-track basis and tend to ignore the album. So, we're looking at albums charts that get severly deflated to the point of not being much anymore.

Numbers ? Get this: Rihanna's latest album (Talk That Talk) entered the UK charts at number one in novembre 2011 and sold 163.000 albums in its first week. Compare this with Oasis' "What’s The Story Morning Glory?" who sold 347.000 copies when it came out in 1995..We're talking more than 50% of straight fall here...

So, when Rihanna (who has sold a few millions albums on the planet than you very much) enters back the charts in its 38th week at the creepy figure of 9,578 album sales (cd AND downloads...) we can surely say the album charts don't mean much anymore. The BPI (UK charts) has released the appaling figure of 13,8% of fall for albums sales since 2011. It has become so bad that record companies would like to...

25 Jun

Prince, a King in the game of pop...

Published by jean-marc,

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artists, charts, music history

Just like Trevor Horn owned the world of pop with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Prince owned the world of pop for a few years and left a trace that will never vanish.

What should we call the man who owned pop music between 1984 and 1989 ? Jamie Starr ? Christopher ? Alexander Nevermind, Joey Coco, The Artist Formely Known As Prince, The Artist or just Prince ?
Fact is, very few artists have had so much influence on pop music and the fair proof to that is how e-ve-ry-one was trying to have that Minneapolis sound back in the mid-eighties. Prince was then extremely productive, often working round the clock in the recording studio and rehearsing new songs with his band, The Revolution, and a new song would take him...one day to do from the moment he dreamt it to the moment he would finish recording the instruments (all of them, thanx to the Linn Drum and the Oberheim 8 voice synth) and mix it (often ending up not using one instrument or more in the final mix: songs like Dove don't have a bass, Kiss doesn't have reverb....).

If you can bear the bad synchro, the video (unauthorized by Prince but then he's putting a "cancel" on everything that doesn't come directly...

15 Mar

Spotify to enter US top 100 singles...

Published by jean-marc,

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charts, music industry, radios, streaming

Spotify's success seems unstoppable, despite many labels (especially indies) removing their artists from the swedish streaming service as they pay-out per stream is extremely low.

Yesterday was a historic day as the US data from diverses streaming companies like Spotify, Rhapsody and Slacker have been added up to the Billboard Hot 100 charts, the US singles popularity chart (which is based on radio play and sales while it's solely based on sales in the UK). This move illustrates very well the change of balance we're witnessing these last two years between digital download sales (no one hardly buys CD singles no more) and streamings. To give a number, Nielsen data shows that 494.000.000 songs were streamed last week while only 27.100.000 singles were legally obtained. All those numbers may look good to the users, yes they love Spotify and streaming and why shouldn't they as the offers are very interesting, but the thing is: this is killing the smaller labels.

Do the maths: Itunes will pay the labels 0,40 Euro per download while Spotify will only retribute 0,002 Euros. If we take that with the numbers of singles sold last week in the as a simple calcalation...

16 Aug

Which song, today, will be tomorrow...

Published by jean-marc,

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charts, music industry, songwriters

Interesting article in AV Club about the songs that are huge hits today and maybe future classics that could still be known and sung for years and decades to come. A song that, just like Yesterday by The Beatles, changes a band into a Pop Icon, a legend...So, which one of recents songs will be like Yesterday, but in 2031 ?

http://www.avclub.com/articles/what-is-the-yesterday-of-today,60168/

We at Kollector can verify the tendancies a song has to stay around and still being played years later, when the hype is gone, when the video has enjoyed zillions of viewings on Youtube and when it's already been covered by many bands. And we can safely say that, looking at the Kollector numbers, on a global scale, "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes is more than a candidate: it's a winner.