KOARs Mixed

MORE Indie Invaders / POSTED BY: KINGSOFAR

Best Buy Will Now Cater to the Digitial Consumers.
Best Buy who owns 840 stores in North America said on Thursday it too wants to be in the online music business. The company is teaming up with music service provider RealNetworks and digital music player maker SanDisk to launch the Best Buy Digital Music Store
David Byrne Frontman of Talking Heads talks Music Shop.
“I imagine I’d be doing the exact same thing a lot of bands are doing: rehearsing and performing, touring in a van. All that stuff.” What technological evolution in the industry has done is allow artists to keep their costs down, stay afloat and continue making music, he said. Byrne said it took Talking Heads at least three albums before he began to feel their sound was being properly captured. With home computer-based recording equipment, the artist can make a fine-sounding recording without outside help. “All these costs start to go away, and the artists – as a by-product – start to learn how to make their records sound the way they imagine them, all by themselves. They’re not beholden to somebody else – some mysterious magician that calls himself an engineer or producer. Right away, they don’t have to be in debt to a record company,” he said.
Physical CD’s Down while Digital Tracks Increase: Big increases in the demand for digital tracks and albums have kept the overall music business in line with last year’s totals says Reuters. According to Nielsen SoundScan figures for the week ending October 1, marking the end of the third quarter, physical album sales so far this year totaled 370.5 million units, down 8.3% from the 404.2 million racked up in the year-ago period. Digital album sales climbed 115%, with 22.6 million sold through September. Downloaded tracks soared 72%, to 418.6 million
Myspace Growing Older:Â More than half the visitors to the popular social network site are now 35 or over–up from less than 40 percent last year. The proportion of MySpace’s audience between the ages of 12 and 24, meanwhile, has dropped to 30 percent from 44.3 percent over the last year, according to a study by comScore Media Metrix released Thursday.