Not one MediaBase station is spinning Ben Jelen. NOT ONE!
But this week 236,208 people had his song "Come On" on their hard drives. And, the single's PAST ITS PEAK! Yup, "Come On" peaked over three months ago. Almost DOUBLE the number of people had "Come On" on their computers then. Yup, when the track was really happening in the online world about 500,000 people possessed it. Cumulatively, even MORE THAN THAT have downloaded the song. Not that far from a MILLION PEOPLE!
I think that's a hit.
I had a long conversation with Eric Garland at BigChampagne today.
Turns out online is a singles business. People only want the TRACKS! But, boy do they WANT THEM!
Let's look at the D-12 cut, "My Band".
This week, 4,557,862 traders had "My Band" on their hard drives. That's 27.27% of ALL traders. Which means that of the almost 20 million people trading tunes this week, 1 in 4 had downloaded "My Band". That's ASTOUNDING!
Oh, 20 MILLION! In the U.S. ALONE!
Yup, trading's a little light at this time of the year. Back in the spring, when everybody wasn't on vacation, about 25 million UNIQUE individuals were trading music a week in the U.S. That's a STAGGERING FIGURE! It TRULY PUTS the iTunes Music Store in perspective. Yes, authorized sales of copy protected tracks are TRULY A DROP IN THE BUCKET! NOW you can see that RealNetworks' dropping of their wares to 49 cents a track is...IRRELEVANT!
Now you might say some of these people with the tracks on their hard drives RIPPED THEM! That they OWN them. That they weren't DOWNLOADED!
That is not true. On a HUGE hit, like the D-12 song, Eric told me at most a HUNDRED or so people put the song into the system. On smaller hits, it can be a few INDIVIDUALS who seed the system.
And, turns out most people view the music as DISPOSABLE! Those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies believe in COLLECTIONS! We need to own and keep EVERYTHING! But not today's traders. When they burn out on a track, they just delete it.
Eric postulated that over the life of "My Band" approximately HALF of all traders possessed the track. Which is TWELVE MILLION PEOPLE!
Last I checked, there was no diamond status for SINGLES! And I don't think there's been a diamond ALBUM since the days of the boy bands. AND, D-12 isn't even the biggest band out there.
It's like we're living in some third world country. Where the UNDERGROUND ECONOMY eclipses the LEGITIMATE economy.
But, the major labels fallaciously decry this as BAD! A knowledgeable person would say...LOOK AT THE OPPORTUNITY!
Suddenly, we can sell music to TEN TIMES the number of people we do now. And, if the RIAA stopped scaring people by suing them, the pool of traders would at least double. Meaning a single could be downloaded by TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE no problem.
And they talk about the growth of so-called legitimate sales.
But what's truly fascinating is this Ben Jelen record. NO ONE IS PLAYING IT! By the framework of the major label rules, it's a STIFF!
But in the mind of the consumer, it has PRESENCE! Somehow the market is percolating by itself. It's generating heat for this unknown artist. He's being IGNORED by the system COMPLETELY, but he's HAPPENING! People are DOWNLOADING HIS MUSIC! They want to HEAR IT!
To tell you the truth, I'd heard Ben Jelen's name, but I'd never heard his music.
But go to his Website, www.benjelen.com/. Click to enter, and then listen to that PIANO!
Oh, the site takes the better part of thirty seconds to load, which is RIDICULOUS, the designer should be SHOT, but when the music comes in...god, if you lived through the seventies, it sounds FAMILIAR!
Now I've got to tell you, when I read about the chap on his Website, I wanted to puke. But only hearing the music, I was open to him. I had to hear more.
The major labels are out of touch.
Radio is out of touch.
But the people aren't out of touch.
The major labels are turning away the profit center of a LIFETIME!
Radio is making decisions on what people want to hear based NOT on what they want to hear.
Like I've been telling you, the revolution is HAPPENING!
P.S. Just for the record, Ben Jelen's "Come On" IS on the SoundScan singles chart. For the week ending 8/8/04, it sold 140 copies. And 22 the week before, It was number 136 on the chart. As for the album chart...Mr. Jelen's CD didn't appear.)
P.P.S. "Come On" is being traded the most, but I find "Give It All Away" superior. "Give It All Away" is what you hear when you go to Ben Jelen's Website.
Subscribe to Feed
