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Digital Music is Creating the New Music Industry Standard – Yahoo! Voices – voices.yahoo.com.

The Grammy Awards and RIAA Recognize the Impact of Digital Music Releases

Digital music is rapidly taking the place of hard-copy records/CDs and creating a totally revamped music industry. Music downloads have become increasingly important not only to artists, but major labels and monitoring agencies, as well.

Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift sets digital sales record

English: U.S. Country music singer Taylor Swift performing at Yahoo headquarters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to an August 22, 2012 report by Grammy.com, Taylor Swift recently set the record for the biggest digital sales week for a song by a female artist. Swift’s single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” debuted atop Billboard’s Digital Songs chart, with more than 600,000 units sold online. In sharp contrast via the same report, Grammy.com detailed Hastings Entertainment‘s 11.6 percent decrease in retail music sales for the second quarter of 2012.

A music legend speaks

During a conversation with Chuck D of Public Enemy, he spoke to me about the creation of PE’s 2012 two-album set, indicating that, “These albums were spawned from the virtual studios of 14 production lab experts in sync from 8 different states in the USA.”

According to Chuck D, both “Most Of My Heroes STILL Don’t Appear on No Stamp ” and its companion album, titled “The Evil Empire Of Everything” will be digitally distributed to serve as the launch point for his digital record label SPITdigital, a joint venture with partner Gary G-Wiz. He and his partner hope to inspire other independent artist to form and become their own record labels, distributing their music online through SPITdigital channels.

Retail sales reports, Soundscan numbers and BDS reports are no longer the benchmark elements declaring success, in my experience. Digital activity is now heavily factored as part of the overall analysis. Often, digital sales are the main concentration of independent artists/labels.

Read my full article on Yahoo! Voices Music

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