Search Results for: have mercy

He had one of the biggest opening sales weeks of 2008, and now, Lil Wayne is the year’s most-nominated Grammy contender. Wayne and his latest LP, “Tha Carter III,” lead the pack with a total of eight nominations, while one of the year’s other biggest sellers, Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” garnered seven nods. Jay-Z, Ne-Yo and Kanye West each earned six nods, while Alison Krauss, John Mayer, Robert Plant, Radiohead and Jazmine Sullivan received five each. Adele is up for four – including Best New Artist – as are Lupe Fiasco and T.I. The… Read more »

The Grinch might be stealing Christmas from music retailers, but thanks to Josh Groban and Oprah, there’s still some singing in Whoville. For the sales week kicked off by Super Tuesday–the release date before Thanksgiving when record labels typically schedule their big guns–the figures were abnormally bad, with only one Top 10 bow and a seven-week-old album topping the charts. Still, that album, Groban’s Noël, can thank last week’s performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show for driving it past Alicia Keys and into the number one spot. Noël crowned the Billboard 200 by selling 405,000 copies for the week ended… Read more »

They endured unpredictable weather on a Spanish plain for their “Vertigo” video and traffic on the streets of New York for “All Because of You,” so U2 thought they were keeping it simple by shooting their next clip in a Dublin, Ireland, theater. That is, until they were put at the mercy of the venue’s Christmas production of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” The group shot the video for the track “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own” on Monday at the Gaiety Theater, according to a band spokesperson. The theater, which is currently housing the children’s story production, gave… Read more »

The future of the music industry is being held, quite literally, in the palm of a twentysomething’s hand. Not the “business” side of the music industry – you know, the folks you’ve perhaps heard weeping into their bowls of caviar over the 31 percent decrease in album sales over the course of the past year, a downturn the suits pin on the advent of digital music downloading and CD burning. No, the “art” side of music business is being forceably changed. Artists are either coming to terms with changes in the ways their music is distributed – or doggedly railing… Read more »

For the first time since the chart’s rollout in July, the No. 1-selling song on Hot Digital Tracks bests the weekly total of the No. 1 title on Hot 100 Singles. With the rollout of Napster 2.0, sales data of digital tracks takes another step north, resulting in OutKast’s “Hey Ya! (Radio Mix)” selling 8,500 downloads compared with 7,500 physical singles scanned of MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine.” This occurrence, if not the speed with which it was accomplished, was predicted in most music quarters once the business model of digital distribution was in place. While it appears that the… Read more »

Music fans in the US are buying almost twice as many singles in digital form over the internet as they are on CDs from stores, according to a report. Some 7.7 million tracks were bought and downloaded since the end of June – compared with four million CD singles sold, Billboard magazine reported. The figures show the success of new legitimate music download services. But some say online and CD single sales cannot be compared because so few singles are now released on CD. Record companies have cut CD single releases because of falling sales, but fans can choose from… Read more »

Digital tracks are outselling physical singles by a growing margin, a sign that consumers increasingly are embracing the brave new world of Internet downloading. Digital download sales outpaced physical singles 857,000 to 170,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures for the week ending Oct. 26. That’s slightly more than a 5-to-1 ratio. Sean Ryan, VP of music services at RealNetworks, says that the rise of digital track sales carries a “symbolic significance,” illustrating the music industry’s shift to online delivery options. He also says it indicates a real opportunity for the music business: “Selling individual songs as an offline strategy wasn’t… Read more »

When 50 Cent’s G-Unit group release their debut albumBeg For Mercy on November 18, four “golden tickets” will be hidden inside four random pressings of the first million copies of the album. The lucky record-buyers who get the winning tickets when they purchase the album will receive a chain with a diamond-studded spinning G-Unit medallion, valued at $12,500. The Willy Wonka-inspired contest is similar to a promotion for Obie Trice, when three golden tickets were inserted into copies of his debut album, Cheers. Recipients of those three tickets won the chance to spend a day in the studio with Trice’s… Read more »

Even though the RIAA continues to go after Internet file-sharers, millions of music fans keep downloading songs. Naturally, this hurts album sales, which were down around 12 percent for the first half of 2003. To try to convince people to actually buy albums again, record companies have offered value-added packaging such as the ever-popular bonus DVD, which typically contains backstage footage, exclusive interviews, videos and maybe a live recording or two. But adding a DVD can be costly. Labels typically pay between one and two dollars per extra disc, which means as much as an additional $2 million for an… Read more »

Tapping a hunger for positive messages in difficult times, Christian artists are appealing to a growing number of people outside of their traditional audience. The trend is reflected in an important barometer, mainstream radio, which closely follows the tastes of its listeners. “The events of the last couple of years have made people more open to spiritual things and trying to find answers,” says Stacie Orrico, a Christian artist who has made inroads on the pop charts. “After, people were just flocking to churches, which was amazing to watch,” she says. Orrico, MercyMe, Natalie Grant, Relient K and even the… Read more »