Music Industry Conference on Metadata. Maybe They'll Figure Out What They Need to Do

Few things drive me crazier about the digital music experience than tracks that are poorly tagged.  In the age of iTunes, how is it possible for so many people to get this wrong?  I get dozens of digital files serviced to me directly from record labels that are missing artwork, missing album titles or have the songs titled improperly.  

Please, people, the track number does NOT go in the title field.  Neither does the name of the artist.  And do NOT USE ALL CAPS IN YOUR TAGGING.

If the music industry can't get this right, what about all the other metadata attached to digital music that will actually help everything move forward and make the overall customer experience better?  That's why it's time for everyone to get their act together.  Maybe this conference is a good first step.  From Billboard:

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I Like This: This is Head

I've been following this Scandanavian band for a while now.  A new EP confusingly called The Album EP is now available.  Stream it here.

U2's Spider-Man Heading to Las Vegas

Well, they gotta make back the prodcuers' money somehow.  And U2 has sunk a bunch of money into this thing. From Billboard:

It’s all about family entertainment now for Michael Cohl, the concert tour impresario who has overseen worldwide tours by the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson, and more. During a 50-minute one-on-one interview at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week with Celebrity Access’ Larry LeBlanc, the former chairman of Live Nation and current founder of S2BN Entertainment capped it off by chatting about the once ill-fated "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" and plugging his new productions and his son’s band.

“We’re working on 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters,' just a whole lot of other things,” he says, later adding Broadway shows of "Bat Out Of Hell" and the "Blues Brothers" to the list. “We think there’s a whole opportunity to create new platforms of shows for the baby boomers, grandparents and their kids and their grand kids. But as far as Live Nation goes, I’m getting along great with [Mike] Rapino and Arthur [Fogel]. We had a two-year scrap and we’re best buddies." He mentioned he has re-signed as a consultant for five more years.

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A Music Map of the UK

Someone should do this for Canada.  Click on the image for a better view.  Order a copy of this poster here.

(Via Buzzfeed)

Weekly Music Sales Report - 27 March 2013

Props to Justin Timberlake this week for saving the music industry from another set of ugly sales stats. We'll get to him in a moment.

First, the Canadian report.  There are three new releases at the top of the album charts, pushing sales up 4% over last week and keeping things at just -2% from 2012.  Physical CDs are down again and are now trailing last year by 17%.  Meanwhile, digital album sales--units, not revenue, of course--are up 24% while digital singles are up 10%.

Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience debuted (as expected) at #1 with a first-week sales total of 46,000 units.  This is the best one sales total of the year so far but exactly half of what Celine Dion did with Sans Attendre back in November.

At #2--a DISTANT #2--is Quebec's Marc Hervieux with 7,200 copies of Le Plasiris Demondes followed by Swollen Members at #3 with sales of 7,000 for Beautiful Death Machine.

As for the biggest single, it's still "Stay" from Rihanna, which saw another 28,000 downloads, pushing her past the 200,000 mark.

Moving to the US, JT put up some HUGE numbers wtih 968,000 units of The 20/20 Experience.  That's still less than the 1.2 million copies Taylor Swift sold of Red back in October, but jeezus, that's a good number today.  It's also a whopper compared to the 684,000 first-week copies he sold of Future Sex/LoveSounds in 2006.  Of those 968,000 albums, 452,000 were digital-only.  That's the third-highest number of its kind.  And one more stat:  by selling this many records in week 1, The 20/20 Experience is already the best-selling album of 2013.

Looking further down the chart--a LOT further down--we find country singer Kacey Musgraves at #2 with 43,000 copies of Same Trailer Different Park.

When it comes to digital singles, it's P!nk and "Just Give Me a Reason" with 241,000 downloads, moving up from #5 last week.

Finally, the most-streamed song in the US--a stat we don't get in Canada for a number of reasons--is "Suit and Tie" from Justin Timberlake wtih 1,671,215 listens.

All figures courtesy Nielsen Soundscan