Charting the Un-Charted

The New TuneCore Charts by Jeff Price

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Today TuneCore launched two TuneCore charts

The TuneCore Top 20 Artist Chart

The TuneCore Top 20 Songs Chart

The charts are compiled from the iTunes daily trend reports. As we get more daily sales information from additional stores, we will include these sales numbers in the charts.

The TuneCore Top 20 Artist Chart adds together the number of albums, ringtones and singles sold to come up with the ranking

The TuneCore Top 20 Song Chart lists the best selling individual songs.

These charts will be updated weekly

In addition, over the next few weeks we will be adding additional features to the charts – for example, on the Top 20 Artist Chart, when the Artist name is clicked on it will show the titles and release date of each album, single or ringtone. When the release title is clicked on, it will provide a track listing. Next to each release title will be a link to buy at iTunes

With the launch of these charts, I also wanted to provide the world a perspective on the legitimacy and importance of TuneCore Artists (and by extension all Artists). There is more music selling by more artists now than at any time in history. Music sales by unit are up, not down (RIAA, IFPI and Nielsen data also state this)

Many TuneCore Artists are outselling and/or are making more money than “signed” Artists. This is a testament to their music. When you add access to digital stores and media outlets (like YouTube) and combine it with social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and mass communication social networking technologies like Twitter, Artists can, and are, selling hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions, of songs across their catalog of work.

Here is some hard data just from TuneCore Artists

In 2009, TuneCore Artists were paid for the download or stream of over 65 million songs and albums over all stores TuneCore works with generating over $35 million in gross music sales

From these 65 million units, TuneCore Artists sold:

• 26,230,308 songs, or about 40% all sales
• 1,470,502 albums, or about 2.3% of all sales
• 37,475,907 streams, or about 57% of all sales

By Genre, Rock was king for paid album downloads selling 16% of all digital album sales, followed by Alternative (13.5%) and then HipHop (12.2%) 

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Rock dominated even more for paid song downloads selling 23% of all digital song sales, followed by Alternative (18%) and then Pop (12.5%)

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However, 23% of all paid streams were HipHop followed by Alternative (13%) and then Rock (12%)

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We also began collecting detailed information in a new way starting November 1st, 2009 and compiled some results through the end of April, 2010

From November 1st, 2009 to April 30th, 2010 TuneCore Artists were paid from JUST iTUNES for the download of 17 million songs and albums generating over $24 million in gross music sales

To the very pressing question of:

What Day of the Week Does iTunes Sell the Most Music?

We can state for TuneCore Artists 16% of all weekly sales from November 1st through April 30th occurred on a Sunday. Most interesting is that Tuesday, the traditional day of the week for new releases and highest one day sales, came in fourth 

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To the other pressing question that keeps you you awake at night as to what the Top 20 Music Buying States on iTunes are, California leads the pack with 9.5% followed by Texas and New York. 

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Which of course leads us to what are the Top 25 Cities for Music Sales for TuneCore Artists between November 1st, 2009 to April 30th, 2010

New York City (defined as just Manhattan) was #1 with $145,000 in music sales, followed by Chicago and Houston. (Yes, we know Brooklyn is a borough, not a city, but the post office database does segregate it out as a city, and all the TuneCore employees from Brooklyn lobbied me hard to make certain I left it as one) 

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Finally, we thought it would be interesting to identify the Top 10 Days of the Year That Sold the Most Music from November 1st – April 30th

Santa must have given a lot of iPods, iTunes gift certificates and iPhones as Christmas Day was the #1 best selling music day of the past six months for TuneCore Artists with over $250,000 worth of music selling.  Next up, no surprise here, is December 26th, the day after Christmas, with over $160,000 worth of music. After that, I could not for the life of me tell you whey Febuary 7th etc sold so much

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Download all the charts

Comments

[THRUST]

Tunecore it's my pleasure to registered with you as a artist, and I'm proud proud off you
all. And shortly in some few weeks i will upload my songs, because right now I'm working on them. And pictures too.
thanks
yours THRUST

[Jacob A]

PLEEZ tell me how to advertise my song!

[klaus cornfield]

the "uncharted", what a great bandname!

[Bruce Kaplan]

I forget. What is alternative alternative too? Who can tell the difference between alternative and not alternative.

Time to consolidate the two, or break out rock into even more sub-genres.

[Jblack728]

how can i get distrubution for my dvd?
can i put my dvd on tunecore?

[ezawada10107@sbcglobal.net]

Love the stats !!! Chicago is #2 on the charts!!! Very nice!!!

[Gerald Brusaschi]

Whole new respect for Tunecore in publishing the this data even if they are blowing the trumpet! Cheers Gerry

[jim]

Does anyone know anything about Sam Adams?

Did he buy some of the these songs?

[Tom F]

Congrats to Jeff for providing a great service and to Erin for being very helpful in getting many of us started.

I would agree that Tunecore should attempt to employ the same music genre charts as Billboard uses with perhaps a top 20, 25 or top-40 for each of their genres, instead of one large top-100 chart. Remember that Billboard combines stats via Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) which monitors radio signals so programmers cannot fudge the number of times a song is played on both internet and local radio stations for higher accuracy. Plus, Billboard also uses SoundScan in their chart stats which monitors retail sales. Tunecore should be able to obtain access to most of this type of information

Thus, Tunecore could lead the way online for multi-genre charts which would effectively cover just about all recorded music as to both airplay and sales--placing the company at the pinnacle of online chart reliability. This would also attract much more media attention on all levels.

[Jeff]

@ Buckminster

98% of what the majors have released failed despite the billions of dollars put into marketing. Just having the marketing spend does not mean sales or fame

Sales come via media exposure allowing someone to hear the music - the music then has to cause reaction. To generate revenue the artist must monetize the fame they have created.

All artists have access to the media outlets now - that's my point.

Look at these TuneCore Artists

Boyce Avenue sold over 1.2 million songs in the past 12 months with no label. Nershoutnever sold over 1 million songs with no label. Kelly sold over 2.2 million songs with no label. Nickasaur has sold over 250,000 songs with no label. Drake sold over 300,000 singles in 11 days with no label. Ron Pope sold over 250,000 songs with no label, Chase Coy sold over 300,000 songs with no label, William Fitzsimmons sold over 500,000 songs with no label, Jesus Culture has sold over 750,000 songs, ALL OF THE BELOW SOLD over 200,000 songs (and this list goes on and on and on)

Please note - all of the artists above and below sold this much music BEFORE signed to any label. Some have since chosen to do marketing deals with labels, others have not.

A Rocket to the Moon
Stephen Jerzak
Lloyd Banks
Jaron and the Long Road to Love
Sky Eats Airplane
116 Clique
Nevershoutnever!
Jeffree Star
Trip Lee
DJ Laz Feat. Flo Rida & Casely
Secondhand Serenade
Jason Reeves
The Boxer Rebellion
Eric Hutchinson
Zac Brown Band
Meiko
Halloween Scream Themes
MGMT
3OH!3
Colt Ford
Jon Lajoie
Relaxing Piano Music
Ron Pope
Brett Dennen
Stereo Skyline
Millionaires
Hyper Crush
Ahanu Music for Spa
Lecrae
Katt Williams
Dr. Horrible's Sing along Blog
Josh Kelley

[Buckminster Darwin]

"More music is selling for less but with the middlemen gone, the artist earns more per sale/"

Yes, but that middleman may put $100,000+ into marketing that makes sales actually happen in the first place.

The challenge is still how do you get in front of people? And now everyone fancies themselves a world class artist, so it's a sea of artists trying to get in front of the same amount of people that only a few 100 had access to 40 years ago. Soooo, adjust your expectations artists!

[Peter Kirn]

I can see the Brooklyn thing. I mean, it's not as if it's been over a hundred years since New York become one city, right?

Oh, wait. Yes it has.

http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/om/html/97/sp249-97.html

You might as well call this a survey of music in the English colonies. Come on. We're one city, New York. We have, like, bridges and tunnels and a single fare that gets us anywhere. And put Brooklyn together with Manhattan (and Queens, and the Bronx, and Staten Island), and the place is even more dominant.

[Bob Ryszkiewicz]

Hi TuneCore: I just added Thumbplay to my stores list, and the possibilities of the "Digital Revolution" intrigue me as I used to work for PolyGram.
Charts? sure, good idea. Might be better expanded to Top 100 or more. Lotsa Artist's in Cyberland..
Kudos to Jeff & Crew for TuneCore. AMAZING what you have accomplished...THANK YOU!

Peace...bob ryszkiewicz

[Jeff]

@George

You hit the nail on the head. More music is being bought and the cost to consumers to buy it is lower.

However, by going direct via TuneCore, an artist makes more money off the sale than it would via a sale by a label

For example, a $17.98 CD bought in Best Buy distributed by a label earns the artist about $1.40 off that sale. A $9.99 album sold via iTunes distributed via a label also earns the artist about $1.40 a unit sold

An artist selling an album for $9.99 via iTunes using TuneCore earns $7 off the sale of the album

More music is selling for less but with the middlemen gone, the artist earns more per sale

[Pamela Royal]

How do I send you my music? Also, do you play and or accept INSTRUMENTAL music? TX