Comments on: Dear Aspiring Music Pundits: Use Better Numbers, Please

By: revmatty

revmatty — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:31:14 +0000

@Maura Johnston: It would be worse if you *couldn't* say you were the number one music blogger in your apartment.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:43:57 +0000

this year? i meant last year… whoops!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:43:39 +0000

One of my favourite facts this year was that Kaiser Chiefs topped the UK Albums Vinyl chart with just 82 copies! And yet people keep saying vinyl sales are up by huge percentages?!

[drownedinsound.com]

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:08:55 +0000

@demonbaby: But I mean... well, OK. Haha, I was actually going to do a post on this earlier this week, but time ran away from me. (I still might!) What elements would need to be in this chart for it to be truly comprehensive?

For albums, I can see:
- Sales
- Torrent traffic
- ZShare/Rapidshare/Sendspace/etc. traffic
- ?

But then you also have the murky areas of people just swapping stuff with their friends via GMail or AIM or their personal Web sites.

Songs might be a bit easier to track, if only because blog posts (not just on music-centric blogs, either) could be an imperfect equivalent for airplay.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:07:31 +0000

@Maura Johnston: And yes, I agree that there is no evidence that NIN's methods would work for smaller bands, and I'm tired of seeing that as well. I suppose more important and more elusive is that NIN sees the internet for what it is: an open-source environment where the record industry method of trying to protect everything doesn't work, but if you find a balance between embracing the openness of the internet and also finding ways to get money back from it, it's still possible to succeed, at least to some extent. I guess the idea behind it is a more important lesson for other bands than the specific methods.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:06:18 +0000

@demonbaby: I would love that, honestly. If I had the resources to do so I would. There are really way too many charts out there and it's causing massive data smog [tm] and opening way too many doors for people to misleadingly pimp their own interests.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:02:22 +0000

@Maura Johnston: Point. And I think the online blog world has copy-pasted an headline they didn't exactly understand and are mislabeling the NIN release as "free," when it's a tad more complicated than that.

Another follow-up to your point is that Billboard charts don't mean dick anymore either, and someone ought to be collecting ALL the numbers - physical sales, digital sales, illegal downloads, blog downloads, etc - and put together charts that are actually relevant in 2009, both from a sales perspective and from an awareness/popularity perspective.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:59:36 +0000

@demonbaby: And again, I think Nine Inch Nails is a special case here. They have a much bigger sandbox to play in than any of the other aspiring bands who CC is trying to reel in, thanks to the money they made from the old system. Trying to compare their efforts to anyone else is a bit ludicrous, no?

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:57:07 +0000

@demonbaby: Well, clearly everyone is misunderstanding everybody. But I think my initial point about Amazon MP3 right now being a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that at this point in time reaching No. 1 on that store's year-end chart is the Internet equivalent of Citizen Dick being big in Eastern Europe, stands.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:40:40 +0000

Actually, if any of you understood the details of the original Creative Commons article that started all of this, you’d realize that technically, the entire album IS completely free. Sure, only the first part was offered as a free download from NIN’s website, but the *entire* release was licensed under creative commons, which means that it was free to do whatever you want with non-commercially. So, if someone offered it on their blog or sent it to all their friends, or if you downloaded it off a P2P site, that was actually a perfectly legitimate way of getting the entire record. And THAT was supposed to be the headline – that giving your music a creative commons license didn’t cannibalize sales – not that “free” is the new way of distributing music. NIN succeeded with Ghosts not by giving the record away, but by offering their fans a number of really nice paid physical options in addition to the free distribution and the cheap download. So, I’m not even sure what this article’s little rant is even about.

By: Chris B.

Chris B. — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:49:09 +0000

I wonder if Jeff Miers is reading this and taking notes. “Forget Vampire Weekend, Nine Inch Nails is going to be HUGE in 2009!”

By: Halfwit

Halfwit — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:00:36 +0000

@Lucas Jensen: It totally stands. Wasn't there already an article on this site (I think relating to Amazon's insane $1.99 album deals) pointing out that a number one position wasn't enough to move the dial on any sales chart?

I think that what Trent is/has been doing is amazing (his actual forum post about the "leaked" video is hilarious), but it's not 1994. He's doing very well for himself, and he's making his fans very happy, but he's not a major sales force anymore. Maybe, in this age, accomplishing #1 and #2 is more than enough.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:59:59 +0000

@Lucas Jensen: Oh yeah, it is. Because people are saying "The power of Trent made people pay for something that was free!" When that ain't the case. Even RS got in on the act:

[www.rollingstone.com]

By: Lucas Jensen

Lucas Jensen — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:30:28 +0000

@LostTurntable: Is that pathetically wrong?

@allabout: Are you really saying that in 2009 about Fred Durst or haterade? And do Soundscan charts really not mean a thing? They're fairly accurate in tracking sales and doing well on those charts means, well, you're selling stuff. Am I missing something here? I think Maura's points stand.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:25:11 +0000

@allabout: btw regarding the spelling of your durstian quote:

12.24:05 maura johnston: is it spelled haterade or hatorade?
12.24:11 maura johnston: you are my durst expert
12.24:19 Anthony Miccio: lolll
12.24:31 Anthony Miccio: you can get away with either, but I'd go "hatorade"

just fyi! i like the 'e' spelling better myself.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:23:35 +0000

@allabout: I'm not taking Nine Inch Nails to task, love. I'm taking lazy writers to task. Did I say anywhere that Nine Inch Nails put out this press release? No.

(Haha, the Trent fans get so sensitive! It's kind of funny really.)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:20:37 +0000

Dear Maura-
Did you bother to look where the press release came from? Your over-eagerness to present NIN in a sour light may have cause you to miss the source.
Looks to me like it came from either Amazon or Creative Commons, more likely the latter. I can tell you for sure it didn't come from NIN's PR.
Of course the Amazon charts don't mean a thing, just as Soundscan or Billboard or anything else in this era.

In the words of the great Fred Durst, "lay off the Hatorade, lady."

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:13:04 +0000

@LostTurntable: Ugh! I forgot about that part.

By: LostTurntable

LostTurntable — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:57:43 +0000

Of course the most pathetically wrong aspect of all of this is that Ghosts I-IV was never offered for free, only the first part was.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:18:08 +0000

@Maura Johnston: i mean, you see this kind of bullshit all the time in press releases. people need to be smarter about how they read what's shoveled out to them. witness:

[www.hypebot.com]

without any concrete numbers about vote totals, this item could just as easily be retitled 'fancorps proves how little effort is needed to move the needle in online polls.'