It’s no surprise that album sales have been on a steady decline since 2000, but according to Billboard, the week ending May 30 was the fewest number of albums sold in one week since Soundscan began compiling the list in 1994. The total of 4,984,000 albums stands in stark comparison to late December 2000, when there was a one week sales total of 45.4 million. Even last year, the week ending May 31, 2009 showed album sales of 5.76 million.
There’s no real way to get exact number of albums sold before the Soundscan era, but Billboard compared the number of albums shipped (the way album sales used to be counted by the RIAA) to the number of albums sold as Soundscan reported, from 1992-2009 and found there were about 30% more shipped than there are scanned. Using that equation, you’d have to back t0 1973 to find a time when there were album sales anywhere near as low as they are now.
While some point to the fact that there weren’t any blockbuster releases in the week before May 30, it’s definitely a sign that piracy and file sharing is on the rise, and as one executive puts it, is “pretty scary.” And with June releases by Miley Cyrus, Eminem and more, sales should rebound. But that’s definitely temporary, and a wake up call to any label or artist expecting to get by on album sales alone.
Happy Limpo De Mayo! They might not be setting the Internet on fire with their new song “Why Try,” but that’s not stopping fans from lining up around the block to see a free Limp Bizkit show. Yes, apparently Limp Bizkit are playing New York’s Gramercy Theater tonight. Our bro bros at Metalsucks snapped the following pic of the scene outside, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, as we’ve heard other reports of people literally lining up around the block to get a taste of Gold Cobra. With a summer tour coming up, it’s a chance for the band to road test some new material and give the curious onlookers a chance to hear it as well. It should be noted that the capacity of the Gramercy Theater is 600, which is a far cry from the venues that the band’s played in the past in Manhattan. It’s just one of those days…
At first we thought this was a joke, but Down/Kingdom of Sorrow/Crowbar guitarist/singer Kirk Windstein got a That Metal Show tattoo done by Paul Booth. I mean, the show is fine, and we’ve come to appreciate it more than we did when it first signed on, but really? Co-host Don Jamieson commented on the tat at about.com.
We did a piece with Kirk Windstein from Down. He got our logo tattooed on his chest. That’s the ultimate, to pay tribute to our show. You’ll see the whole thing, the tattoo being done and us goofing on Kirk while he’s doing it. I asked him what he was going to do when we get canceled? He said, “when you get canceled, I’m f&*ked for life!”
The fourth season of That Metal Show is airing on Saturday nights at 10 on VH1 Classic.
In a column written for nme.com, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has revealed the he once worked as an exotic dancer.
When I graduated from Harvard and moved to Hollywood, I was unemployable. I was literally starving, so I had to work menial labour and, at one point, I even worked as an exotic dancer. ‘Brick House’ [by The Commodores] was my jam! I did bachelorette parties and I’d go down to my boxer shorts. Would I go further? All I can say is thank god it was in the time before YouTube! You could make decent money doing that job – people do what they have to do.
So wait, you can graduate from Harvard and still be “unempoyable?” I think what Tom’s trying to say is ‘don’t worry about getting into a good school,’ because that’s what I got out of it. How can a political science degree from an Ivy League school be worthless? Maybe there wasn’t a huge job market for making a “wiki wiki” scratching sound with his guitar in Los Angeles at the time?
The other thing we got out of this was that there’s probably a good number of awesome puns that can be applied towards Tom’s old job. Drowned In Sound, where we first heard about this, has the best one, with “Balls On Parade.” In fact, except for our tag, we can’t top that.
In an interview last week with the New York Post, KISS bassist Gene Simmons weighed in on the Obama administration and Wal-Mart. Guess which one he’s for and which one he’s against? (hint, the new KISS album, Sonic Boom will be out exclusively at Wal-Mart on October 6).
“They’re terrific. They give 2.5 million people jobs,” he says of Wal-Mart. When asked by the notoriously right-wing Post what he thinks of the current political leadership, he stated “Means well, lacks experience. And that’s dangerous. I voted for President Obama, but his health care plan is a complete disaster.”
Oh Gene. Only someone completely out of touch and beholden to corporate interests would call Wal-Mart terrific. I mean, it’s a great store to go people-watching and all, but they’re union-busting and pay the majority of their workers below the poverty level. And as far as politics, does anyone really give a fuck what Gene Simmons thinks? There are some musicians out there, like Otep and Rage Against the Machine, who are known for being politically active. And then there’s KISS, a band whose 30+ year career consists of new ways of writing songs that say “let’s bang.” Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got some amazing songs, but asking Gene Simmons about politics is like asking Born of Osiris what their favorite Misfits song is.
I don’t know if this new ad for Samsung’s cellphones is poking fun at Ozzy Osbourne’s search for a new guitarist, or just a bit of unfortunate coincidental foreshadowing. Also I wonder if the chimp’s name is a shot at Mr. E. Lee, who apparently needs his place in metal history defended.
[Thanks to the excellent Hypebot for the heads up.]
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:55 am
Gloom And Doom, That's Unfortunate