THE EAGLE'S WALMART DEAL

Hits Magazine's Lenny Beer Blog wrote an editorial, dated November 9, 2007, about Billboard's rule change that allows exclusives such as the Walmart/Eagles deal to be included in chart tallies. Below is my email to Lenny Beer Blog in response to the editorial. What suprised me is that within a matter of minutes, HITS posted it as part of the comments below the editorial, highlighting the key point of my comments in the last paragraph.

It looks like I might have struck a nerve here. Keep watching Radiationroom.com over the next few months as I will be writing more on this subject. - DJ Carli

TO: lennybeerblog ***AT*** hitsmagazine ***DOT*** com
Subject: Walmart Eagles Comment, Billboard has to track USED product

Dear Lenny Beer Blog...

If the Eagles/Walmart exclusive is a sign of what is to come, then what is going to happen to indie stores when the big-boxes have exclusives on the hits? Where are the new acts going to break? Certainly not on radio, because new, unsigned acts more often than not lack the necessary payola needed to bribe their way onto the major radio chains. MTV is worthless, and there is so much crap on the internet these daze that breaking an act on Youtube without off-line promotion is difficult if not impossible.

Yes, these sales need to be reported, but there needs to be a qualifier in analyzing those sales. The Eagles are a legacy act and were probably paid a good chunk of money for this, considering the rumors that Don Henley and Glen Frey can't stand to be in the same room together much less play in a band together. While the Spice Girls/Victoria's Secret deal is to be expected (low-IQ music and lingerie somehow goes together), if more hit acts get canabalized by exclusives that will ultimately make it HARDER to get mainstream retailers such as Boscov's and The Bon Ton, who used to have CD sections, to start stocking discs again, unless they have exclusives of their own.

Not to discount the fact that my local mom & pop here in York PA, which stocks roughly twenty thousand titles at any given time, does a brisk business in new and used VINYL, used CDs and cassettes, and consignment merchandise such as guitars, stocks very little in the way of current hit CDs.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IS SOUNDSCAN AND BILLBOARD ADD CATIGORIES AND RANKINGS FOR 2ND HAND CDS AND BOTH NEW AND USED VINYL. There is no data that I know of which tracks the sale of 2nd hand merchandise, which is information that would be very useful to all segments of the biz. My bet is that the head bagels at the focus group research agencies eyes would pop when they find out just how many teenagers these daze are listening to the likes of Areosmith and Deep Purple next to their Korn and Killers.

Have a great day.

Peter Carli
WMSS Radio, XM Satellite Radio

Online references: LennyBeerBlog webpage on HITS Daily Double