Rascal Flatts Hits third No. 1: the country trio that saw the highest sales week and highest sales for a single-act disc last year, has scored its third consecutive No. 1 album selling 546k. “Still Feels Good” set a download record for a country disc, with 44,000 digital copies of the album sold. The Flatts also sold an additional 93,000 tracks as individual downloads.

Foo Fighters’ “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace”: moved 168,000 and opened at No. 3. Not surprisingly sales were about half the first-week total for their last album, 2005’s “In Your Honor.”

Reba McEntire’s “Reba Duets,”: took a 57% slide, selling 130,000, and slid to No. 6.

Overall sales of albums are down 14%: from last year at 337.3 million albums sold. Of that total, 300.6 million were CD’s. The number of digitally downloaded tracks has risen 46% from the same period in 2006 to 612.2 million.

Consumers believe sales are down because: music sales are down 14% because there is NO GOOD MUSIC. A CD with 2 good songs and 12 pieces of crap does not constitute an album. It constitutes a money grab. There are maybe 10 artists in the country right now who make CD’s that play well from beginning to end. The rest suck.

Check out digital expert Chris Castle’s blog “Fix it or We’ll Fix it For You“: in which he admonish universities to clean up their act ala illegal downloading.

Does illegal Downloading benefit artists? :

Castle says…

There is so little data on the benefits to artists from downloading that it’s hard to point to anything but anecdotal evidence. The best example I know of is an Austin band called Two Guy Trio that had the most downloaded track on Kazaa at one point, over 1 million downloads.

Not ONE extra sale, no worldwide inquiry of where can I get the record, please come play in my town, none of the behavior you’d expect from that much “promotional” activity.
Garbage in, garbage out.

Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target plan to make significant cuts in the amount of floorspace they devote to CDs: Predictions of cuts that range from 20% to 40%, with Wal-Mart making the most aggressive pullbacks. A retail cutback could be much more damaging than any single year revenue decline. It may just be a DEATH SPIRAL – retailers stock less music, so consumers have less to choose from, and then buy even less, causing retailers to stock even less. (read full article)

The Bottom Line: KOAR is sick of this gloom and doom news. The downfall of Britney Spears is talked about on every single news station. This culture is more interested in personal lives than music itself. Personal lives took the front seat and music took the back seat. What on earth is more pathetic than the celebrity tabloid business and the people that buy into it? We believe that great music can stay on the forefront of people’s minds, if its great, then anything is possible.

Send KOAR great music and tell us how well its reacting and email tips@kingsofar.com