Stores to stock 1m Band Aid CDs
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One million copies of the new Band Aid single will be sent to record shops in time for its UK release on Monday. Robbie Williams and Dido are among the stars on a new version of charity song Do They Know It&#39;s Christmas?
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THEY are the hottest Christmas seller this year and promise to fit entire CD collections into the palm of your hand. Retailers say that MP3 digital audio players are flying off shelves in electrical stores
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The musical gear retailer packs it up to go private.
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Online store will continue to offer certain songs at low prices, company says.
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The proceeds of the concerts will go for tsunami relief in India.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM (digital rights management), from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada.The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card&#39;s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears&#39; &quot;Blackout&quot; and Barry Manilow&#39;s &quot;The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.&quot;In contrast, online retailer&#160;Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple&#39;s&#160;iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.About 4,500 retail outlets in the U.S. will sell the Platinum MusicPass cards by the end of the month, including Best Buy, Target, Trans World, Fred&#39;s, and Winn-Dixie, according to Sony-BMG. In Canada, the cards will sell through Best Buy, CD Plus, and Wal-Mart, and later through record store HMV.Online sales will &quot;ultimately be part of the game plan&quot; for at least one of those retail outlets, said a source familiar with the offering.With Valentine&#39;s Day approaching, Sony-BMG is counting on demand for gift cards to boost sales of the downloads, as well as the collectible nature of the cards themselves, which feature images of the artists and information about the albums.Sony-BMG will offer &quot;expanded&quot; versions of two of the initial offerings -- Celine Dion&#39;s &quot;Taking Chances&quot; and Kenny Chesney&#39;s &quot;Just Who I Am: Poets &amp; Pirates.&quot; These will retail for around $19.99 and in addition to the Platinum version will also include an additional album from the artist&#39;s back catalog.When they first considered online music sales, major record labels initially insisted that download services such as Apple&#39;s iTunes Store encrypt their tracks with DRM technology to prevent copying.Smaller labels sold unprotected MP3 files through sites like eMusic.com, gambling that the increased sales and notoriety that would come with easier access to their music would outweigh sales lost through unauthorized copying.That argument eventually won favor with Apple, which last May began offering tracks from EMI without DRM for a small premium, later bringing the price down to the same $0.99 it charges for other tracks with DRM.Amazon followed suit in September, selling unprotected MP3 files from EMI and Universal. Warner joined them on Dec. 28.The record companies all say they hope the move will lead to greater online music sales.Sony-BMG said it hopes its combined model, selling a download pass through a physical store, will lead to greater sales of physical and digital music.Albums need a boost, as the number sold in the U.S. dropped again last year, even as the number of music purchases rose, market watcher Nielsen SoundScan reported last week.U.S. music buyers made 1.4 billion music purchases in 2007, up from 1.2 billion a year earlier, Nielsen said.Nielsen counts a purchase as an album, single, CD or online download. Within that figure, digital track sales rose from 582 million to 844 million as buyers cherry-picked the tracks they liked from albums available online, while physical album sales (whether sold in-store or over the Internet, but excluding downloads) fell to 451 million in 2007, from 556 million in 2006, it said.But if U.S. consumers are making more music purchases, they may be spending less: Nielsen also counts something it calls track-equivalent album sales, in which it counts 10 track downloads as the equivalent of an album. By that measure, track-equivalent album sales fell 9.5 percent to 585 million in 2007, from 646 million in 2007.&#160;
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The Band Aid song Do They Know It&#39;s Christmas? is to be re-recorded featuring Coldplay, The Darkness and Travis, reports say. It is 20 years since Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure recorded the first charity song
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Band Aid 20&#39;s new version of &#39;Do they Know its Christmas?&#39; is being touted as the fasted selling album after it sold over 100,00 copies on the first day of its release in UK.
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The Band Aid 20 single is on course to be the Christmas number one following strong sales this week.
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The Millennium Stadium is trying to stage a 'Live Aid' style concert to raise more than Â£1m for the Tsunami disaster appeal.
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Rock 'n' roll fans with deep pockets can buy a Beatles guitar or a mugshot of the pop star formerly known as Cat Stevens at what Christie's said on Wednesday was its biggest auction of show business memorabilia.
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Despite recording sales of 100,000 copies on the first day of its release, Band Aid 20&#39;s new version of &#39;Do They Know It&#39;s Christmas?
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More than 72,000 copies of the new Band Aid single were sold on its first day of release, according to sales figures. A Band Aid spokesman said they were &quot;very, very happy&quot; with Monday&#39;s demand, which saw shops open early.
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NEW YORK (Billboard) - With music specialty stores dying by the hundreds this year between the liquidation of Tower and Musicland, Nordstrom and Sears may be picking up some of the slack. Both retailers have added an entertainment cache to their stores by carrying CDs.
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Robbie Williams&#39; Greatest Hits album is to be sold in memory card format for mobile phones and hand-held computers. It is believed to be the first time a major artist has sold music on the small, portable format.
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Everything&#39;s coming up Bob Geldof these days. Not only is Sir Bob in the news with the long-awaited DVD release of Live Aid this season, but now rumours are flying about a potential Band Aid III.
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Memorabilia from backstage at the tsunami relief concert is to be auctioned to add to the Â£1.25m already raised.