These are exceedingly strange times in the music business. This week’s number one UK album is What’s Rock and Roll? self-released by The Reytons, a cheeky indie rock band from South Yorkshire who sound like a rough-and-ready Arctic Monkeys tribute act. ( You can read the full article on The Telegraph)
I would tell you more, but I don’t know much more, and neither does anyone else. They’ve never had a hit single, have a minimal social media presence, and just over 70,000 followers on Spotify, where they are ranked the 24,225th most listened-to artists in the world. They recently completed a tour of 1,000- to 1,500-capacity venues around the country.
The number two album is Midnights by Taylor Swift, which charted for the 14th week in a row. The American singer-songwriter has over 67 million followers on Spotify and is currently ranked the second most popular artist in the world. When her forthcoming stadium tour went on sale, she crashed the Ticketmaster website.
“In the old days, charts were based on what was sold in stores,” points out Chaz Jenkins, the UK-based chief commercial officer at Chartmetric, a music analytics service. “Today, we’re measuring listening, not sales.”
Roughly 100,000 new tracks are uploaded to streaming services every day. More music came out today than in the whole of 1970 (which would have been around 5,000 albums, and roughly as many singles). And tomorrow, guess what? There’s another 100,000 coming to expand the infinite digital shelf space.
“In the past, unsigned artists didn’t release music,” notes Jenkins. “Maybe they scraped together enough money to make a demo. Today, kids in their bedrooms, who’ve never played live, can release music globally in 200 countries within 24 hours. We’re monitoring over eight million artists at the moment. Don’t bother trying to scroll to the bottom (of the chart), because you’ll never get there.”
You can read the full article on The Telegraph)
