Curious numbers

There was a theory going about back in the nascent days of I-tunes that the proliferation of MP3 sales would turn the industry from an album market back into a singles market.

A break out single was going to become the currency of music again.

Of course about two days after the nascent days, they figured out a hit single was only a hot item to be bootlegged.

About four days after the nascent days, the “INDUSTRY” hired someone to track the general traffic of bootleg mp3 and they learned artist that had a strong single got ripped off in a ratio of 96/4. However artist with a strong catalog got ripped off at a much lower ratio of 20/80. While people where still probably ripping off the single they were paying for the collection of good songs.

That being said lets look at the download numbers for the last five days. You might wonder why choose the last five days? Well that is the period of time that has elapsed since the release of “Songs in the key of Green”.

215 MP3 downloaded. And not one of those downloads is from the sale of my “Single of the moment” program. Every MP3 is part of a collection. For those of you interested in the specifics, here they are.

White and Black: 9 copies downloaded
Songs in the key of Green: 6 copies downloaded
200th show song collection: 3 copies downloaded
Black and White: 1 copy downloaded.

For those of you that might think the numbers are kind of small, let me assure you, they would be impressive for a months worth of tracking or even possibly a quarter’s activity.

Once again, the numbers are less important then the tale they tell. People don’t seem to be responding to the “Single of the moment”. It’s a good price and I feel the songs are pretty strong. But it seems I have a strong catalog and people are making a pretty significant investment in owning a part of it. The sale leader for the 5 day period, “White and Black” goes for 1000L$ a pop. Hardly an impulse buy.

The amount earned by the sales of “White and Black” and “Songs in the key of Green” for the period are 13,200 L$. This is the equivalent of 4.4 fee paying show.

I feel at this point I should remind you I don’t do music for the money. But the money are a quantifiable measure of success. I’m here to get my music out to the people that enjoy it, and there is nothing wrong making a few dollars along the way. It seems the number are telling me I’m doing a pretty good job and making some in roads in to selling music via Second Life.