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Music

It Costs Over $1 Million to Make a Hit Pop Song

By Judy Berman on

We’re fascinated (and also somewhat taken aback by) a new post on NPR’s Planet Money that breaks down the cost of creating a hit song. As Zoe Chace explains, the process begins with a writing camp, where a label gathers top songwriters and producers to put together the tracks for a star’s upcoming album, renting out around ten studios for around two weeks and dropping approximately $25,000 a day. For Rihanna’s Loud, the example Chace follows throughout the piece, that comes out to $18,000 per song. Of course, the entire cost of writing, recording, producing, and finishing a pop hit pale in comparison with the promotional budget. See an infographic with the full expense breakdown after the jump, and be sure to read the Planet Money piece for all the industry-insider details. … Read More

Music

5 Fascinating Musical Revelations from the UCLA Pop Conference

By Michaelangelo Matos on

Last week, the Pop Conference — held since 2002 at Seattle’s Experience Music Project — shifted locale to the UCLA campus. As before, the conference — a mix of accredited academics, critics and journalists pursuing pet themes, and musicians with ideas about what they and others do — featured a lot of smart talk about all kinds of pop, from the shape-shifting beats of Low End Theory (the LA club that served as the crucible for Warp Records star Flying Lotus), which served as the subject of a climactic roundtable, to the prototype minstrels of Thomas Jefferson’s time, brought to life by Ned Sublette. Here are five notable lessons from a weekend packed with them. … Read More

Music

Not-So-Awesome Infographic: Album and Single Sales, 1973-2010

By Judy Berman on

As if you needed proof that the sky is falling on the music industry, here are two graphs that confirm our worst fears. Album sales — including digital purchases — are hovering at around a third of the all-time high they hit only a decade ago, in 2000. In fact, we’re buying fewer full-lengths now than we did in 1973. There is some good news here, for the music industry if not for fans of the album as an art form: sales of singles have skyrocketed, as the chart after the jump illustrates. … Read More

Television

Music Industry Apocalypse Comes to Prime-Time TV

By Judy Berman on

The death of the music industry may be wreaking havoc on musicians, labels, and businessmen everywhere, but here’s one potentially positive thing that’s come out of it: a new drama series about a record exec struggling to deal with his (and his clients’) impending obsolescence. AMC is developing the show, Man with the Golden Ears, with… Read More

Music

The Top 10 Vinyl LPs of 2010: Do Young People Really Buy Records?

By Judy Berman on

As the record industry dies, there’s been one persistent counter-narrative to all the doomsday predictions: vinyl LP sales just keep increasing. Now that the SoundScan numbers for 2010 are in, it looks like the theory still holds. In a year that saw album sales decline by 13%, vinyl is up by 14%. But don’t get too excited — LPs still comprise less than one percent of total album sales.

None of the above revelations surprised us, but here’s something that did: people aren’t buying the vinyl records we assumed they were buying! If you thought hip, young things were single-handedly reviving the LP market, think again. The #1 vinyl record of the year was The Beatles’ Abbey Road, practically doubling the sales of its nearest competitor, The Arcade Fire. Check out the oldies-laced top 10 list after the jump and let us know whether it looks odd to you. … Read More

Music

Why Buy the Cow When You Can Stream the MP3 for Free?

By Jake Lancaster on

A new study shows that teens 13-17 collected significantly less music in 2008 than in the previous year, regardless of whether they paid for it. Kids today! Market research firm NPD Group found a sharp drop in purchases of CDs and digital downloads (19 percent and 23 percent respectively), but a whopping 28 percent fewer teens bothered to rip CDs from their friends, and there was a slight downturn in tracks illegally downloaded from peer-to-peer sources too. … Read More

Music

Vinyl Is Dead; Long Live Vinyl!

By Eli Dvorkin on

There have been quite a few record-shop eulogies making the rounds of late — including our own Virgin Megastore closing-sale expedition — but few raise a lump quite like PopMatters new interview with Atomic Records’ founder Rich Menning. Menning waxes rhapsodic about living the music-nerd dream and offers a paean to… Read More

Music

Radiohead’s Pet Artist Becomes Label CEO

By Caroline Stanley on

As the result of a drunken Christmas night two years back, Stanley Donwood, otherwise known as the artist who has made Radiohead look so good for almost 15 years now, is launching his own label, Six Inch Records. He’ll release works from the three artist friends who he emailed “while still reeling from red wine”: Patrick Bell (who we’re having a tough time finding any information about), Max de Mara (a collaboration between Max de Wardener and Mara Carlyle), and The Joy of Living (another band we’re having trouble finding any information about). … Read More