Top Selling Albums Of The 2000's

Here we are at the end of the decade and it's a good time to take a look at just who sold what during the transition from Music 2.5 to Music 3.0.

Believe it or not, The Beatles had the top-selling album of the 2000's with their greatest hits package "1." The album had sales of over 11,448,000 copies since its release in November 2000, according to Nielsen SoundScan’s decade-end sales numbers. The Fab Four sold a combined 30 million units during the decade.

But rapper Eminem was the 2000s’ top-selling artist with 32.2 million combined in sales, with two albums in the decade’s Top 10 - The Marshall Mathers LP selling 10,195,000 and Eminem Show right behind it at 9,789,000.

It used to be that a real bona fide hit was pretty much guaranteed to sell diamond (10 million sales), but only ‘NSync’s No Strings Attached (11,111,000) and Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me (10,523,000) managed to hit those numbers along with The Beatles and Eminem.

But what really showed the decline in CD sales was that only two albums released in the years between 2005 and 2009 managed to get in the Top 20 of the 2000s’ bestsellers - Nickelback’s All the Right Reasons and Carrie Underwood’s Some Hearts at 14 and 17 with sales under seven million.

Flo Rida’s Low was the 2000s biggest-selling digital single, while Coldplay’s Viva La Vida was the best-selling digital album.

Wonder what the numbers will look like at the end of the next decade?

Bestselling Albums of the Decade
1. The Beatles - 1 - 11,499,000
2. *NSYNC - No Strings Attached - 11,112,000
3. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me - 10,546,000
4. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP - 10,204,000
5. Eminem - The Eminem Show - 9,799,000
6. Usher - Confessions - 9,712,000
7. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory - 9,663,000
8. Creed - Human Clay - 9,491,000
9. Britney Spears - Oops! ... I Did It Again - 9,185,000
10. Nelly - Country Grammar - 8,461,000

Bestselling Digital Singles of the Decade
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain - "Low" - 5,214,000
2. Lady Gaga feat. Colby O'Donis - "Just Dance" - 4,690,000
3. Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours" - 4,619,000
4. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic - "Apologize" - 4,439,000
5. The Black Eyed Peas - "Boom Boom Pow" - 4,349,000
6. Soulja Boy Tell'em - "Crank That" - 4,315,000
7. Lady Gaga - "Poker Face" - 4,200,000
8. Coldplay - "Viva la Vida" - 4,140,000
9. Taylor Swift - "Love Story" - 4,005,000
10. Katy Perry - "Hot N Cold" - 3,945,000

3 Pillars of Effective Social Networking

Here's a great post from the Networlding blog called The 3 Pillars of Effective Social Networking. It's not referring to digital social networking however, but to real physical social contact - as in one-on-one personal interaction.

This blog violates a number of digital social marketing principles though, as all I know is the author's name is Melissa, since there's no background about her anywhere that I could find. It seems that she assumes that you know who she is already, which can be a big mistake.

Good post though, about the 3 R's (recognition, referrals and revenue) and the 3 C's of making a referral:

"People love recognition, referrals, and revenue.

Make a referral, but hope you get back:

1. Credit (for the referral, especially when other people use your contact for their benefit, they should give you public credit for the introduction)
2. Contacts (that can help you and your business)
3. Compensation (If and when appropriate)"

Great advice that applies online or good old-fashioned person to person.

The Real Reason Why Apple Bought LaLa

By know everyone has heard that Apple has bought the semi-subscription service LaLa and there's a lot of industry speculation as to why. I'd like to give you my personal speculation, but first some background.

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, who knows anything about the digital music business has predicted for some time that digital downloads would give way to subscription at some point. The reason? Why pay $10 to download and own 10 songs when for the same amount (approximately) you can stream millions of songs any time and anywhere you want. While subscription service Rhapsody has set everyone up for subscriptions and Spotify threatens to gradually put it over the top (whenever it finally reaches the US), it's pretty much a given that the digital music world would change to subscription overnight if Apple suddenly offered it.

Although it seems that subscription isn't exactly in Apple's best interest since it takes in a lot of dough by selling downloads, iTune's profit margins are razor thin and the downloads from the store primarily act to promote sales of Apple's hardware. Would that profit margin be any better with subscription? Would it serve the same purpose promote iPods?

That's what makes LaLa such an interesting purchase. LaLa isn't exactly a subscription service and it's not exactly a download service - it's a hybrid. First of all, it's streaming from the "cloud" (that's a network that stores all the content online - see the picture at left), not a download, but it's the pricing that's interesting. The customer can listen to any song for free once, but has to purchase the right to listen to it again for 10 cents. You have the right to listen to that song forever and ever thereafter.

So for Apple, it's the best of both worlds. It's in the streaming business, it's still gets individual purchases (although at a reduced rate), and it'll have the infrastructure and brainpower to implement a true subscription service at a later date if needed. Sounds like a win to me.

10 Major Milestones In Modern Music Marketing

Bruce Houghton wrote a nice post on his ever entertaining Hypebot blog some time ago about the 10 major milestones in modern music marketing. It's hard to argue with any of these, and they all are certainly milestones in some way, shape or form. I've added my comments in italics afterwards where appropriate.

In no particular order:

1. Seth Godin writes "Permission Marketing" way back in 1999 pointing the way towards a new era of artist and fan relationships. I personally thought that his book "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us" is more of the milestone, but Permission Marketing certainly ranks right up there.

2. CD Baby offers indie and d.i.y. artists a home to reach a wider audience on the net.

3. The Arctic Monkeys parlay internet pre-release buzz into the fastest selling debut album in UK history.

4. OK GO proves the power of YouTube with an ultra-low budget "treadmill" video "Here We Go Again."

5. TuneCore tears down the last barriers to distribution offering low flat fee no strings attached access to the worlds top digital stores.

6. Radiohead releases "In Rainbows" asking fans to pay want they want for the download.

7. Trent Reznor grosses $1.6 million in first week sales by offering fans options from $5 to a $300 limited edition package of his latest Nine Inch Nails release "Ghosts". Whether it's calculated or just an inherent feel for Internet marketing, Trent is the master and deserves to be on any top 10 list.

8. Jill Sobule asks fans for help recording her new album raises more than $80,000. Pretty good considering she was only looking for $75k and could've raised more had she not cut the offering off.

9. David Byrne & Brian Eno release a new collaboration via Topspin. While more evolutionary than revolutionary, this was one of the first well planned and executed releases that took full advantage of modern music marketing techniques with impressive results.

10. Amanda Palmer made $19,000 in 10 hours on Twitter proving the music marketing potantial of micro-blogging platform.