Janet Jackson hopes new album ends sales slide
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After failing to crack the million  mark with her last two albums, Janet Jackson is wary of using  the "c" word to describe her upcoming release, "Discipline,"  which hits stores on February 26.
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Digital music sales have doubled in the last year, but overall music industry sales are falling.
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So far 2008 has not been a good year for music sales. This week Alicia Keys, below, stays atop the Billboard chart with âAs I Amâ (J), but the number of copies that CD sold is barely above the historic low for a No. 1 album. Nielsen SoundScan reported that 61,000 copies of the album sold last week; the least number of weekly sales for No. 1 is 60,000, set by the âDreamgirlsâ soundtrack a year ago. (The numbers are rounded.) This week the âJunoâ soundtrack (Rhino) is at No. 2 with 58,000, Mary J. Bligeâs âGrowing Painsâ (Geffen) is No. 3 with 52,000, and Radioheadâs âIn Rainbowsâ (ATO) is next with 46,000. The R&B singer Raheem DeVaughn opens at No. 5 with 45,000 sales of âLove Behind the Melodyâ (J) and John Legendâs new âLive From Philadelphia,â available only through Target, reached No. 7 with 33,000.
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After this year's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" by entertainer Janet Jackson, the National Football League has chosen a veteran producer for the next Super Bowl halftime show here next February.
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To bounce back, ousted execs like Kevin Rollins and Robert Nardelli can learn something from Janet Jackson, says author Jeffrey Sonnenfeld.
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In a slow week for the Billboard chart, Alicia Keys reached No. 2 with 112,000 sales of âAs I Amâ (J); Mary J. Blige moved 89,000 of âGrowing Painsâ (Geffen) to reach No. 3; âNow Thatâs What I Call Music!â Vol. 26 is at No. 4 with 54,000; and the 18-year-old country singer Taylor Swift rose three spots to No. 5, though sales of her self-titled album, on the Big Machine label, dropped 39 percent last week to 47,000, Nielsen SoundScan reported. Radiohead reached No. 1 with the conventional release of âIn Rainbows,â through the ATO label, on CD and other formats. The indie-rock âJunoâ soundtrack (Rhino), popular online, opened at No. 8 with 38,000.
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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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In the history of music industry dust-ups -- and there have been plenty -- the current Michael Jackson/Eminem flap rates pretty low.
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LOS ANGELES  - Michael Jackson is hoping to have his child molestation charges dismissed, or short of that, to delay his Jan. 31 trial date.
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PRO BASKETBALL Kobe Bryant said criticism of him by former Lakers&#39; coach Phil Jackson in Jackson&#39;s new book is meant to help sales.
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Michael Jackson&#039;s metaphorical piggy bank is about to be cracked   wide open.
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Michael Jackson tried to "buy peace" in the past by paying to settle child molestation claims but now -- facing trial in another abuse case -- wishes he had fought his accusers in court, a lawyer for the pop star said on Friday.
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Jazz singer/pianist Norah Jones' first album in three years opened at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts Wednesday, but its first-week sales were less than half those of its predecessor, according to Billboard.
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Janet Jackson, newly svelte after losing 60 pounds, says she gained weight for a role in the upcoming movie &quot;Tennessee,&quot; which she ultimately had to pass on because of her new album.
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LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Country star Alan Jackson scored  his third chart-topper on the Billboard 200 albums chart  Wednesday with his latest release, "What I Do."
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A year after her Super Bowl wardrobe "malfunction" shocked the world, Janet Jackson is headed to another Super Bowl event.
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After a two-week streak during which the album selling periods of Christmas 2004 and New Year's Day 2005 looked stronger than their counterparts of a year ago, this week gives the appearance that the year's first sales week came up a loser, down almost 28% from the start of 2004.