With Tower Records going bankrupt last year and the inevitable closings of Virgin Megastores in the near future, what does this mean for music retail?
A Press Release sent today from the folks at Apple...
iTunes Now Number Two Music Retailer in the US
iTunes Customers Top 50 Million
CUPERTINO, California—February 26, 2008—Apple® today announced that iTunes® (www.itunes.com) is now the number two music retailer in the US, behind only Wal-Mart, based on the latest data from the NPD Group*. Apple also announced that there are now over 50 million iTunes Store customers. iTunes has sold over four billion songs, with an incredible 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone, and offers the world’s largest music catalog of over six million songs from all of the major and thousands of independent labels.
“We’d like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes.”
Super Tuesday
Inspired by Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" speech…song & video by Will.I.Am of The Black Eyed Peas...director Jesse Dylan, Bob Dylan's son...featuring a star studded cast.
For more info go to www.yeswecansong.com
Wonder what happened to the leftover "Vote or Die" T-Shirts?
Where's the Music Ribbon
I was recently going back and forth on the IM with an old colleague...
Since leaving the record biz he's gone on to bigger and better things, working a 9 to 5 with a major telecommunications company. I told him not to bother coming back to the industry to which he replied "I don't know man, this music runs through my veins". I thought for a second and said "The music industry is cancerous---music is the cure---ain't no money in the cure, just the treatment"
We left it at that...
Muddy Waters
With the New Year comes email fwds from everyone and their mom about starting fresh, loving one another, and a slew other cliché resolutions. But this one stood out:
A group of alumni, all highly established in their respective careers, got together for a visit with their old university professor. The conversation soon turned to complaints about the endless stress of work and life in general.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went into the kitchen and soon returned with a large pot of coffee and an eclectic assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal - some plain, some expensive, some quite exquisite. Quietly he told them to help themselves to some fresh coffee.
When each of his former students had a cup of coffee in hand, the old professor quietly cleared his throat and began to patiently address the small gathering... ''You may have noticed that all of the nicer looking cups were taken up first, leaving behind the plainer and cheaper ones. While it is only natural for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is actually the source of much of your stress-related problems."
He continued...''Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In fact, the cup merely disguises or dresses up what we drink. What each of you really wanted was coffee, not a cup, but you instinctively went for the best cups... Then you began eyeing each
others' cups....''
Now consider this: Life is coffee. Jobs, money, and position in society are merely cups. They are just tools to shape and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not truly define nor change the quality of the Life we live. Often, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee that God has provided us... God brews the coffee, but He does not supply the cups. Enjoy your coffee!''
The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything...