About 1,500 artists break the “obscurity line” each year. Less than 1% do it on their own. Not so fast says Jeff Price, the CEO of TuneCore.
Seems like TuneCore has the success measurement numbers that Nielsen is (completely) missing. Read Jeff’s latest post. Quotes below:
When they were unsigned, the following TuneCore artists sold the following quantities of songs across their releases:
Kelly sold over 2,000,000 million tracks
William Fitzsimmons sold over 150,000 tracks
Soulja Boy sold over 200,000 tracks
Boyce Avenue sold over 1,200,000 tracks
Ron Pope sold over 250,000 tracks
Colt Ford sold over 300,000 tracks
Secondhand Serenade sold over 250,000 tracks
Tapes N Tapes sold over 200,000 tracks
Nevershoutnever sold over 1,000,000 tracks
Drake sold over 300,000 tracks
MGMT sold over 225,000 tracks
The Medic Droid sold over 150,00 tracks
Nickasaur sold over 150,000 tracks
Harry and the Potters sold over 200,000 tracksin 2009 alone, unsigned artists using TuneCore generated over $32,000,000 in music sales by selling over 42,000,000 songs - this is more than one song a second selling by a TuneCore Artist on iTunes.
Commentary: After this lack-of-data debacle, I don’t think many people will be placing a lot of faith (as far as measuring the success of independents) in the numbers released by SoundScan/Nielsen. Perhaps I shouldn’t have sensationalized the Silverman interview to start all this, but it sure sparked a lot of debate (read Steve Lawson’s take), and look at all the great data that’s flowing now. I have a ton of respect for Tom Silverman (he didn’t have all the data) and Rick Goetz is running a great blog at Musician Coaching. What else can I say other than TuneCore Rocks (again) and thanks for joining us on this roller coaster ride.