8.19.12 - 9.1.12 Numbers Thread

For those of you who thought Kris was not going to have a second single, I just read on his official site that he announced that he would have one coming out very soon. So I guess his management still has faith in him.

Yep, all the signs point to KA being dropped from the label. He is averaging 2 or 3 appearances a month now. He did mention something about another single coming in the future, but even the Kris stans knew what that meant. It's just a matter of time until he has a press release saying "he has decided to go a different direction".

Yes, krisallenofficial.com. Apparently, Kris announced he was having a new single at a concert he did a few days ago in NY.

What I have noticed is that Kris doesn't have any active fansites, at least none that I can see when I google for it. The one I used to follow for his first single airplay hasn't had a new post for a month and his official site seems to have mainly one person posting everything. It's like a ghost town. He also has less than 300K twitter followers and it's been 3 years now. Just wonder where his fans went. He was the winner, after all.

stardust, I hadn't thought of that angle, that he could release a single without any support. That would make a lot of sense.

Not sure where to post this, here or on the main thread, but I thought this was an interesting article from the NY Times about the importance of social media and YouTube in creating hits. It also talks about the continued importance of radio in generating sales.

www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/business/media/how-call-me-maybe-and-social-media-are-upending-music.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120822

Based on this article, it is clear that:

- Music videos are critical -- more and more people listen to music on YouTube.
- Online "buzz" via social media and YouTube views are important ways to convince radio to play an artist's songs.
- Radio is still needed to boost songs to an awareness level high enough to generate big (1 million+) sales.

Excerpt:

"For decades, the song of the summer would emerge each year following a pattern as predictable as the beach tides. Pop radio would get it rolling before school let out, and soon the song — inevitably one with a big, playful beat and an irresistible hook — would blare from car stereos everywhere. But the success of this summer’s hit, Carly Rae Jepsen’s cheerfully flirty “Call Me Maybe,” shows how much the hitmaking machine, as well as the music industry itself, has been upended by social media.

Only a year ago, the charts were dominated by stars who had come out of the old machine of radio and major-label promotion: Katy Perry, Rihanna, Adele, Maroon 5. This year’s biggest hits — “Call Me Maybe,” Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” and Fun.’s “We Are Young” — started in left field and were helped along by YouTube and Twitter before coming to the mainstream media.

Nearly two-thirds of teenagers listen to music on YouTube, more than any other medium, Nielsen said last week. Ms. Jepsen said in a recent interview that “the viral videos are what’s been the driving force for this. It was insane to see that the music could spread that far because of the Internet. It’s a cool thing. It changes the game completely.”

YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are now record labels’ textbook tools for starting a marketing campaign, and if the numbers there are big enough, they can be used in pitches to radio and television programmers.

The song’s [Call me Maybe] trajectory also demonstrates the continuing power of radio, which record executives say is still essential to turn any song — no matter how much online buzz it has — into a genuine smash. In March and April, when “Call Me Maybe” was getting tens of millions of views on YouTube, it still had relatively low radio play — fewer than 5,000 spins a week on Top 40 stations in the United States, according to Nielsen. It hit No. 1 on iTunes on May 27, but took almost a month to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s singles chart, which counts sales as well as airplay and streaming services. By then it had about 20,000 spins a week on multiple radio formats.

'There’s not a million-seller out there that doesn’t have radio play,” said Jay Frank, chief executive of the label DigSin. “But its first million generally doesn’t come from radio.' "
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