CASA - The Contemporary A Capella Society

The latest figures are in, and statistics show that recorded music sales are down 29% in the past year across the country. This isn’t just for Take 6; this is for everyone, from Radiohead to Rhianna. Considering most businesses (including music) run on a narrow margin, this is terrible news. However, it’s only the latest decline in a trend that’s shown a 10-30% decrease in sales every year since the birth of Napster. Budgets have already been slashed, record stores closed, record labels bankrupt. featureimage: 

The Tufts Beelzebubs has its cover of The Feeling's "Love It When You Call" featured on a rerelease by the original artist. The Beelzebubs' version of "Love It When You Call," from its album, Pandaemonium, is perhaps the first a cappella cover to be featured on the original artist's album. The song is the last track of the "deluxe edition" of the Feeling's second album, "Join With Us." "Join With Us" (the regular, 1-CD version) was released in February 2008 in the UK only and entered the British Album charts at #1.

Ben Folds announced on his blog that he has narrowed over 200 a cappella groups down to a list of 18, some of whom have already recorded his songs, and others he'll be recording this coming month. To see the list and his comments, visit: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=9158119&blogID=452682030

A few months back, I wrote about giving yourself a good cushion for album releases, i.e. you shouldn’t still be frantically working on finishing your album on May 10 if you’ve had a big album release concert scheduled for May 14 on the calendar months ago. Considering that it takes about 3 weeks for the average replication company to press, print, assemble, shrink-wrap, and ship your product, that should have been part of the schedule from the start!

It's another week, and I've been forwarded yet another youtube video that I MUST see. This time it's some guy lipsynching to Moosebutter's brilliant John Williams Medley (with lyrics all about Star Wars). Struck me as odd at first (the song's several years old), and then I got a little mad (why aren't they the ones getting the credit)... And then I saw the view count. Over two million. Let's assume on average that people watch it twice. That's still one million people checking out this video.