[Dixielandjazz] A HIT RECORD 1,022,000 COPIES IN ONE WEEK!!!!!

[Bryan Livett]

She's also a "jazz artist" who has sold out to pop-rock-country to get those
numbers, (her latest album features Dolly Parton as a guest!)
http://www.norahjones.com/home.htm

Bryan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 9:25 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] A HIT RECORD 1,022,000 COPIES IN ONE WEEK!!!!!


> Most of us have been following the downward spiral of record sales in
> the music business, over the past two years. Especially those who are
> storing their own band CDs in their garages.  Then suddenly comes this
> incredible sales number for Norah Jones. Interesting? You bet,
> especially since Ms. Jones is described below as a "JAZZ ARTIST WHO HAS
> ACHIEVED POP STAR NUMBERS." . . . "who has the ability to change the
> whole musical culture of what people are listening to, and wanting to
> buy." Now that's heady stuff.
>
> I have never heard her. Have you all?
>
> Whatever she has, I think I want some. ;-) VBG.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
> February 19, 2004 - New York Times
>
> A Hit Record by Norah Jones Buoys Industry
>
> By CHRIS NELSON
>
>       Norah Jones has given the ailing music industry a boost as her new
> album sold more copies during its debut week than any other release has
> managed to do in more than two and half years.
>
> Ms. Jones's second album, "Feels Like Home" (Blue Note), sold 1,022,000
> copies during the week ending Sunday, the best performance since 'N Sync
> released "Celebrity" in July 2001, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
>
> Ms. Jones was not the only musical act to flourish last week, as the
> hip-hop duo OutKast, the R&B singer Beyoncé and rock groups Evanescence,
> Coldplay and the White Stripes benefited from their appearances on the
> Grammy Awards. "The College Dropout" (Roc-A-Fella), the first album by
> the rapper Kanye West, sold 441,000 copies during its first week of
> release, putting it second on the SoundScan list. Legal sales of
> downloadable songs topped two million units for the first time last
> week. (By contrast Eric Garland, a spokesman for Big Champagne, a
> company that tracks file-swapping, estimates that about 250
> million songs in the MP3 format are being traded each week through the
> most popular services for sharing downloads illegally.)
>
> Two anticipated records, a rock album from Courtney Love and a pop album
> from Kylie Minogue, had disappointing debuts, at 33,000 and 43,000. But
> sales for the week of Feb. 9 to 15 were the highest of any Valentine's
> Day week since 1991, when SoundScan began tracking music sales. Sales
> were up 25 percent over the same week last year.
>
> "Everybody was expecting that sales would be strong - it's always a
> strong week," said Rob Sisco, president of Nielsen Music, which operates
> SoundScan. "But particularly the sales on Norah going over a million and
> the strength overall, I don't thing it was anything anybody was
> expecting."
>
> Bruce Lundvall, president and chief executive for jazz and classics at
> EMI Music, which owns Blue Note, said that Ms. Jones, a jazz artist who
> has achieved pop star numbers, had the potential to "change the whole
> musical culture of what people are listening to, and wanting to buy."
>
> The strong week comes as the music industry is trying to recover from a
> three-year slump that record labels trace largely to Internet
> downloading and CD copying. Year-to-date sales for 2004 are up 13
> percent over the same period last year, continuing an upward trend in
> the last quarter of 2003. Still, on Tuesday, the Recording Industry
> Association of America continued to fight online music file-swapping in
> court, filing lawsuits against 531 computer users.
>
> The industry is still suffering through major restructuring. A merger of
> the major label groups owned by Sony and Bertelsmann is awaiting
> approval by regulators. Time Warner is in the process of selling Warner
> Music Group to private investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. And Tower
> Records recently filed for bankruptcy protection.
>
>
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