Guess The Music Celeb Dropping His Album Via Lyft

Music celebrities will use just about any social edge they can get these days, and it doesn't matter what the platform is.

In May I posted about Britney Spears using Uber to launch her "Pretty Girls" single, complete with a vehicle wrapped in custom Britney graphics.

Not to be outdone, Justin Bieber is making his new album available for early purchase via the Lyft app. Fans can purchase it for $5 from November 12th to 19th. If you buy it via the app, you get the download link at the end of the ride and a $5 credit towards your next Lyft ride (which makes the album essentially free).

And that's not all, the Biebs is also surprising random people by showing up as a passenger in the front seat of some of their rides.

Okay, so this might seem a bit over the top, but it just goes to show how hard even the top 0.1% of music celebs work at keeping in the social forefront and staying in the public eye.

If A-list acts like Justin Bieber and Britney Spears are using all the tools at their disposal, it shows the need to keep up with the latest in social media to make sure that you continue to reach your audience.

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Artists Use Uber To Release New Music

It seems that the car service Uber is becoming more than a taxi. It's also a way to deliver and even break new music to fans.

Britney Spears released her new single "Pretty Girls" on May 3rd using Uber as the "vehicle" to get the word out. She jumped on Twitter and Facebook during the day telling fans that they could be the first to hear the song in in Los Angeles and wanted to take a brief joy ride to have a listen.

At midnight Uber customized SUVs were available free for up to 30 minutes to those that registered, who could then hear the song before anyone else.

Fans were told to open up the Uber app on their phone between 3 and 9PM, then enter the promo code PRETTYGIRLS in the promotions section to unlock the Britney vehicle option. Winners were on a first come, first serviced basis and were also then eligible to win a prize of 2 tickets to a Britney concert.

Whether you like Ms. Spears and her music or not, you have to admit that this promotion is pretty good out-of-the-box thinking. It combines a nice combination of new and old technology to do what promotion departments have been doing for a very long time - breaking a song.

That being said, the song wasn't exactly a smash, reaching only #29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, proving that even a good promotion can't make a hit if the song isn't killer to begin with.

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Top 10 Earning Women In Music

Shakira - #10 on the list

Forbes just released their top "10 earning women in music" list and the results are far from surprising. If you look at the pop charts you'll see that's it's mostly dominated by women, and the major artists are easily able to take advantage of that popularity with touring and endorsements. One of the things to take notice in this list is the number of music women who have their own fragrance lines, something that isn't as readily open to men.

Here's the Forbes list:

1. Britney Spears - $58 million, thanks to touring, endorsements and a new fragrance line.

2. Taylor Swift - $57 million, from $1 mil a show and endorsements from Covergirl and Sony.

3. Rhianna - $53 million, from touring and endorsements.

4. Lady Gaga - $52 million, from touring, fragrances and music sales.

5. Katy Perry - $45 million, from touring and music sales.

6. Beyonce - $40 million, and she was mostly inactive this year. Doesn't include her new $60 mil endorsement deal with Pepsi.

7. Adele - $35 million, from touring, sales and publishing from her 25 million album sales of 21.

8. Sade - $33 million, thanks almost exclusively to touring. Maybe the biggest surprise on the list.

9. Madonna - $30 million, endorsements, fragrances, shoe line and royalties.

10. Shakira - $20 million, endorsements, touring and fragrances.

As you can see, there's plenty of money to go around once you enter the superstar region of the business. The big problem is being able to get to that point, of course, and it never seems to get any easier. Each of the above is a fairly large business unto themselves and requires a commensurate infrastructure, so the star's ultimate bottom line is far lower than their income. There are a lot of 5 and 10 percent deductions along the way.

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Why Katy And Gaga Were Banned In China

China may be the biggest market in the world, but it's still one of the most difficult to crack. Just ask Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. While Gaga and Katy may have substantial followings in China, you still have to get by the Chinese government, who appears to not be buying what they're selling at the moment. Both Gaga and Perry made a list of 100 songs that China's Ministry of Culture has ordered Chinese websites to remove by September 15.

According to a Reuters.com story, "Gaga racked up six songs on the list, all from her most recent album Born This Way. "The Edge of Glory," "Hair," "Marry the Night," "Americano," "Judas" and "Bloody Mary" were all included in the ministry's announcement, while the album's title track was included in an earlier list that the government issued. Perry placed twice in China's latest banned-songs collection, with "E.T." and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)."

But they're not the only ones. Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)," Britney Spears' "Burning Up," and even the 1999 Backstreet Boys hit "I Want it That Way" all made the list as well.

So why did the government choose to ban these songs? According to the ministry, allowing the songs on its list to be shared and downloaded over the web has "endangered national cultural safety" for one thing. For another, the tunes in question had not been registered with and reviewed by the ministry, which makes you wonder how they decided that they were a threat to national security in the first place.

According to ministry guidelines, all imported digital music needs to be translated into Chinese and submitted to the government before online distribution is permitted. The crackdown applies to all websites, including personal sites.

While these songs may not be the height of taste and culture, they're about as far away from a dissenting political voice that you can get. It just goes to show that even though the Internet allows you to access the world and for the world to access you, sometimes there can be large impediments in the way.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Bad Music Sales Get Worse

The news just keeps getting worse in regards to music industry sales. Last week the #1 album on the Billboard 200 chart by the band Cake, "Showroom of Compassion", sold just 44,000 copies, which is the lowest for a #1 since Soundscan began tracking sales in 1991.

The #1 record the week before, Taylor Swift's "Speak Now", was the previous all-time low at 52,000 (it was down to 35,000 this week), but this week managed to be a lot worse than that.

That being said, Britney Spears "Hold It Against Me" had a great debut atop the Digital Songs chart with 411,000 downloads sold, which was the largest debut ever for a female artist, topping Taylor Swift from about a year ago by almost 100,000.

Overall physical sales are down 11% from last week and 15% from this time last year. Then again, where are you going to go to buy a CD these days? With one of the last remaining CD retailers, FYE, about to shut its doors, it's not easy to buy one of those round pieces of plastic even if you wanted to.

That being said, digital sales are not terribly robust well, with Bruno Mars' "Grenade," at No. 2 (219,000; down 21%). Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" at 3 (190,000; up 3%), Katy Perry's"Firework" at 4 (184,000; down 20%), and Enrique Iglesias' "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)" at #5 (182,000; down 5%). Overall, digital sales are down 8% from last week, but they are up 8% over last year at this time.

What's the upshot? CD album sales were the cash cow of the industry, but that cow is dead and slaughtered. It's now a singles world, but there's a huge difference in cash flow from 400,000 singles as compared to 400,000 albums like in the golden days. That doesn't necessarily mean that we'll never go back to album sales. It just means that's not where the music industry is at currently or in the foreseeable future. If you're an artist, you just gotta roll with it.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.