The Jazz Shmammys Are Official!

1. And The Winner is....  A quick follow-up on my Grammy Awards comment last month.  The four Jazz Grammy’s were awarded. Two of the four prizes went to Chick Corea (FOREVER).  Interestingly enough, on Spotify the track that won best solo, (500 Miles High) is not available for streaming.  ALSO, on both iTunes and Amazon the song is not available for purchase or download unless you buy the whole album. I wonder how many Grammy voters actually heard the solo they voted for? Vocal Jazz Awards went to Terri Lynne Carrington (The MOSAIC PROJECT) for an adventurous album by a drummer who brings together many of the best female vocalists (and instrumentalists) in jazz today.  A worthy effort.  Big Band Award went to Christian McBride (THE GOOD FEELING) - this was a bit of an upset, with LA-Based jazz great Gerald Wilson up for a well-deserved and never received Grammy for LEGACY.  Oh well, it would have been a nice 94th birthday present.  A more interesting fact is that of the 4 awards, 3 of them went to Concord Records, which is distributed by Universal and is now the 5th largest record group in the world.  So it pays to be big in the world of the Grammys.  Which brings us to:
2. Scary Statistics: Some really interesting facts about the music industry:
   

• In 2008 105,000 albums were released (428.4 million units sold total) 
• In 2011 77,000 albums were released  (330.6 million units sold)  A 26% drop in releases, and a similar drop in sales. 
• In the last 10 years music sales are down 60% (that is worse than the Las Vegas Real Estate Market!)  
• In 2011 the top 10 albums made up 6% of all sales (Adele made up 3% of all sales for the year).  Of the 77,000 albums released, 2% (1,500) represented 90% of all sales.  The old 80/20 rules is now the 90/2 rule.   

• If you do the math, this means that 98% of albums released last year averaged sales of 438 units.
• The number 2 search engine behind Google today is: YouTube  (which is owned by: Google)
• 95% of music that is streamed on the internet is not paid for.  The VAST majority of this music is streamed on: YouTube
• Every minute of the day, 60 hours of new video and audio are uploaded to: YouTube
• Think about this the next time you download music without buying it.