According to HitsDailyDouble, Jay-Z’s Roc-a-Fella/IDJ Kingdom Come-back is this week’s #1 album (11/28/2006), scoring the year’s third-highest sales debut with 708k units sold.

Sounds pretty good! Well, if you listen to Bob Lefsetz, it’s atrocious. Why?

12/5/2006: Last week’s chart-topping Roc-A-Fella/IDJ Jay-Z Kingdom Come album is off more than 80% at #5, followed by Apple/Capitol’s Beatles Love mash-up at #6 and Arista/RMG’s surging Sarah McLachlan holiday song collection at #7. The Top 10 is rounded out by SRC/Universal Motown’s Akon (#8), Sony Label Group’s Now Christmas Vol. 3 (#9) and 143/Reprise’s Josh Groban (#10).

Jay-Z is supposed to be a marketing genius; got his start in music but looks like he’s lost his musical flare. Though his first week numbers were fairly high, he has dropped off significantly - 80%. Is he spending too much time as a Creative Director on Budweiser instead of promoting his music?

Maybe the model of tying artists/bands to brands isn’t working… check out Bob’s posting here.

The music industry revolves around two areas: artists and fans. Anything around these two areas are ways in which the artist interacts with the fans, or how the fans communicate with the artists. Such areas include distribution, marketing & promotion, artist & repertoire, creative, and others.

A fanbase is probably one of the most important aspects to the music industry. If a major artist has no fans, chances are, they will get dropped from their respective label. If an independent artist has no fans, they will either write music for themselves or change their style in a way to attract fans.
Fans buy music. Whether music is bought or sold online or offline is irrelevant as long as a transaction is taking place at some point where dollars are exchanging hands. Fans are not just consumers but the largest content contributors to the music scene. RollingStone may write a story about a band, but that story is pushed into the music world. Fans may experience an amazing concert or CD, and they’ll review it, blog about it, take pictures, video, and post content online for anyone to see. These fans also have their own community in which groups of fans for a respective artist get together on messageboards or forums and talk about the upcoming tour, seating arrangements, tips on buying tickets, drum solos, or whatever else.

Let me show you how important fans are to a band, specifically, the Dave Matthews Band:

Illustrated here are three websites: DaveMatthewsBand.com (official site to the Dave Matthews Band) in red, Nancies.org (top DMB fansite), and in green, AmIDreaming.org (another DMB fansite). Over the past 5 years, you can see that as the Dave Matthews Band grew in popularity, you can see how it’s fanbase increased. However, when Dave Matthews Band cooled off for a bit, it’s fanbase was still intact and thriving (2004-2005.5). Without this fanbase, the Dave Matthews Band wouldn’t be able to pack stadiums, sell millions of albums, nor ride in a half dozen or so spectacular Prevosts (my personal favorite).

While I believed that the DMB fanbase was strong, I didn’t realize how strong it really was when the band had little news or performances. The community of music fans around the Dave Matthews Band is extremely strong and loyal but many non-flavor of the week bands follow this as well (not to this extent though).

Ways in which bands can interact with their fans are changing… for the better. The day where you either became a bandaid (think Almost Famous) or wrote a letter to the band and hoped you’d get an autograph in return is now gone and replaced with finding your favorite member on MySpace and having them friend you in real-time, or traveling on a tour with a band through their fanclub. Real-time setlists on their websites to official live albums selected by the fanbase are the norm. Just look at the latest DMB release on RCA… each live track was voted by the bands fanbase on their official site.

There is much more on how a band can become 2.0, as I’ve written in the past. The point of this posting was to show how important a fanbase is to a band… as they typically generate more traffic than the band itself. Now that we realize how important the fan community is, it’s important to the band to figure out how to communicate with them effectively and efficiently.

MGM GRAND GARDEN ARENA, LAS VEGAS
FRIDAY-SATURDAY, MARCH 23-24, 2007

DMB is excited to announce that The Fray will be the support act for both of the MGM Grand Garden Arena shows.

The Warehouse ticketing request period for the shows at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Series 2-2007, will open on Monday, November 27, 2006 at 9:00 am EST and will close on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:00 pm EST. Confirmations will be posted on or before Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 1:00 pm EST. The Warehouse ticketing request period is not first come, first serve; the order in which you place your ticket request does not matter

Tickets will be available to the general public on Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 12:00 Noon local time (please refer to local information for on sale locations and times). Ticket outlets will be posted to the DMB and Warehouse websites as soon as the information becomes available.

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND AUSTRALIA TOUR - APRIL 2007

The Warehouse ticketing request period for the shows in Australia, Series 3-2007, will open on Monday, November 27, 2006 at 9:00 am EST and will close on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 1:00 pm EST. Confirmations will be posted on or before Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 1:00 pm EST. Please refer to local information for public on sale dates and times. Information will also be posted to the Warehouse website as soon as it becomes available.

Tickets for the Dave Matthews Band Australian tour will only be available to Warehouse members with billing addresses on file that are located OUTSIDE of the United States of America. Please do not place a request for these shows if you have a United States billing address.

After joining the Warehouse and logging in, you may request tickets for Dave Matthews Band tour dates, by visiting the Request Tickets/Tourdates page in the Ticketing section. Please refer to the Warehouse ticketing guidelines for additional information. There is no limit to the number of Dave Matthews Band shows you request through Warehouse ticketing. Please note that if you request multiple shows and are confirmed for them, you will be responsible for payment for all tickets. All ticketing sales are final and no refunds will be issued.

2007
Sat / Mar 31 / West Coast Blues & Roots Festival / Fremantle (Perth) *
Mon / Apr 2 / Festival Theatre / Adelaide
Wed / Apr 4 / Brisbane Convention Centre / Brisbane
Fri / Apr 6 / East Coast Blues & Roots Festival / Byron Bay *
Tue / Apr 10 /Hordern Pavilion / Sydney
Wed / Apr 11 / Hordern Pavilion / Sydney
Fri / Apr 13 / Vodaphone Arena / Melbourne

* Tickets for the West Coast and East Coast Blues & Roots Festivals will not be offered through Warehouse ticketing.

West Coast Blues & Roots ticketing and initial lineup information is available now at sunsetevents.com.au.

East Coast Blues and Roots Festival ticketing and initial lineup information is available at bluesfest.com.au.

As a huge fan of live music and also an avid virtual world inhabitant, I’m ecstatic when the two worlds collide. An article came out late yesterday on MTV.com with the title, Are Virtual U2 Concerts Even Better Than The Real Thing?

This is a great article that shares insight into the virtual world concert arenas. For me, going to concerts is about the community of fans that are there to experience the thrill of the live show - building up commradere amongst thousands of people. It’s also about the vibe the band radiates whilst on stage- while solo-ing or holding a high note. Up until now, watching a concert on the web, whether thru AOL, Network Live, or the defunct DCN has been solitary. Yes, thousands of other people are watching, but their not “experiencing.” The virtual world arena allows people, albeit due to land/scale issues in Second Life… not many, to experience the concert with other people in real-time.

This is fundamentally significant. Concerts aren’t about just watching - they are about the experience. Finally, a medium such as Second Life can deliver this… More to come about concerts and community….

Haystack 4000 launched today. Apparently, it’s a call to action for anyone who has anything music related…. they’re looking for original content.Â

This could be a secret song no one has heard, a picture from a concert with a great story behind it, a video of your mom break-dancing, or even a funny dream about John Lennon taking over the world in a King Kong jumpersuit.

The 4000 stands for the “first 4000″ submissions will be granted access to the content and to the site upon launch.

It’s the end of an era. Looks like one of my personal favorite bands have called it quits - Twin-A. The band actually started at a fundraiser I put on about 4 years ago to raise money for the American Lung Cancer Society and since then, played hundreds of shows around the world. They have opened for major acts such as Fuel and played as far away as Eastern Europe and Japan.

This is one of the most musically talented acts that I’ve seen and wish John, Jorge and Paul the best. I’ve become good friends with the band over the years and know they will go on and do amazing things.Â

All good things must come to an end….

This post is a precursor of what a future post or two will discuss on this blog, but I’d like to mention that the Beastie Boy’s will be screening a concert-turned-movie that was shot in October 2004 at the Loews 34th Street theater on March 28 @ 7:30pm EST. Tickets apparently are $24.

This is one of the first movies that will showcase concerts on the big screen (in theaters).  This is a trend that will be coming in the near future to movie theaters across the USA (think companies like Network Live). Apparently, this Beastie Boy concert was recorded by over 50 handheld cameras that were given out to fans at the show. The footage should be spectacular and catch many concert moments that the more “professional” crews would miss.

“Fight for your right to party!”