Paste Magazine Music Samplers Go Digital

When I first discovered Paste magazine, I thought that someone finally got it right.  For years I had pissed and moaned about how music magazines were missing the boat – why just READ about music, why not actually share the MUSIC? So I held my first issue of Paste with the same excitement that I held issue number one of Spin, issue number one of Wired and issue number one of Mondo 2000; THEY GET ME. But as usual, it doesn’t take too long before those good things come to an end.  Usually right after I subscribe, the magazine changes policy in an cost-cutting effort.

Paste was amazing in the early days because they provided both a music sampler CD and a video sampler DVD in the same issue.  The CD would almost always contain a few jems each month and the DVD would focus on music videos, live performances, movie trailers, some occasional shorts and usually a sponsor or two.  Where could you get more for a$5 investment beyond a CD, a DVD and a great read? Actually it was even cheaper when subscribing, so that’s exactly what I did. Just a few issues later, I got the notice that they were axing the DVD sampler. And now, a couple years later, the February 2009 issue will be the last newsstand issue with a CD sampler.

According to page 32 of that issue, Paste claims they ship more than 2,000,000 CDs each year. They surveyed their subscribers and discovered that most are ripping the CD to digital and tossing the disc. Subscribers can still opt-in to receiving the physical discs, but everyone else, especially newsstand purchasers will receive a special code in each issue to download their digital samplers.  I love the idea of a special printed code unique to each magazine/person, but I like the idea of a physical CD and DVD more.   But that’s likely just my prehistoric self showing a fondness for shinny objects…

SO, why should musicians and bands care about Paste?  Because they are clearly paying attention to the trends toward digital.  And while most music magazines are still struggling to figure out how to survive, Paste seems to have things well in-hand.  The Paste website, according to both traffic monitors Alexa and Compete, saw some of the highest traffic counts in their online history right towards the end of 2008.  And while Rolling Stone still has several hundred thousand more website visitors (and magazine readers) than paste, during 2008 the traffic to Paste’s website grew by 571% compared to Rolling Stone’s meager increase of 17% (according Compete.com).

Beyond the slick digital sampler code, Paste has also created a VIP club for just $3.95 per month that I’ll be joining very shortly as well.  Beyond a cool “Members Only” t-shirt, I will also score early access to the next 11 issues of Paste digitally, all the back issues digitally, 24 full albums (digital), 11 digital samplers, exclusive MP3’s and finally a handful of those DVD Samplers that I loved so much, so many years ago.  If you want to be as cool as I’m going to be, you can subscribe as well by visiting their VIP page.  Might be your best $4 music investment for the month.

In the meantime, here’s what you need to know to get your music to Paste magazine and to their monthly Paste Culture Club podcast:

Contact Nate Douglas at:
Paste Magazine
Attn: Reviews
PO Box 1606
Decatur, GA 30031

Once your stuff arrives, follow up with Nate by email or phone: 404-207-1182

For the Paste Culture Club Podcast, contact Kevin Keller by email or phone: 404-207-1190

I look forward to reading about your band, hearing your music and watching your vids, all on the new digital versions of Paste!

-pjc

Music Purchases Surge to 1.5 Billion in 2008!

Yahoo! is reporting the 2008 Nielsen/SoundScan music sales numbers for the music industry.  In a world full of record unemployment, reduced consumption, crashing stock markets, housing market declines and war, is it really any surprise that the world is turning to music for comfort?  Yes, music purchases INCREASED 10.5% in 2008 versus 2007 according to this report.

The link above will provide the spreadsheet view of these statistics, but if you want the Top 5  points about this recording breaking music sales years, here they are in no particular order for your consumption:

1. Digital Albums OUTSOLD Physical Albums sold over the internet by over TWICE as much (65.8M vs 27.5M). The general trend is that the online sales of physical albums (CDs mostly) was down 8.6% over 2007, while Digital Albums sales reached a new record in 2008 and was up 32% over 2007.   Bottom line is, if you had your new CD and the same new album digitally on Amazon, the average here is stating that you were likely to sell more than TWICE as many digital vs. physical online.

2.  One bright spot in the physical sales stats here was good old VINYL. The report states the vinyl album sales nearly doubled from the 1m purchases during 2007 to 1.8M in 2008.  These are PURCHAES, not sales volumes.  Maybe that limited edition, signed and numbered idea has merit after all (and profit too). The top selling vinyl album in 2008 was Radiohead’s In Rainbows which sold 25,800 copies. A distant second was The Beatles Abbey Road with 16,000 copies.

3.  This report is focused on the 1.5 billion music purchases – not sales.  The vast majority of those purchases?  Digital Music Tracks equated for over 1,070,000,000 purchases during 2008, which set a new record and grew 27% over the 844M purchases in 2007. The top selling digital album for 2008 was Coldplay’s Viva La Vida which sold 617,000 times with Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through the Static a distant second with 325,000 digital album purchases.

4.  Nielsen uses three ways to categorize Albums based upon its age; Current, Catalog and Deep Catalog. We will not spend time here in this summary to get into all the details, but we mainly want to convey this; Of the three categories for DIGITAL albums, the one with the strongest growth during 2008 was Deep Catalog, up 41% over 2007.  Current Digital  Albums were up 27% and Catalog Digital Albums were up 37%.   I think this clearly conveys that its not just the new “current” music that is being purchased digitally. Digital albums grew to represent 15% of total album sales in 2008, after representing 10% in 2007 and just 5.5in 2006.

5. The Digital field gets wider:

• 2005: only two songs sold more than 1 million digital copies.
• 2006: 22 songs sold more than 1 million digital copies.
• 2007 : 41 songs sold more than 1 million digital copies.
• 2008: 71 songs sold more than 1 million digital copies.

With Apple’s recent decision to remove DRM copy-protection from iTunes tracks, it’s not hard to predict over 100 tracks will sell more than 1 million copies during 2009.  Will yours be one of them?

Finally, I find it odd that the Nielsen “factoids” section goes to lengths to mention that Metallica’s Death Magnet was the number one selling Internet Album (a physical disc being sold by an online store) with 144,000 units sold. But FAIL to mention that they sold more digital copies of the same album (158,000) but Metallica was at the bottom of that top 10 digital album chart.  Why is that newsworthy or “Factoid” worthy to Neilsen?

-pjc