The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 2-5-12

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 2-5-12

Download the Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-29-12

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at The Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-29-12

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

Photo by Bradley Quinn for SnowPatrol.com

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-15-12

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-15-12

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

Sigur Ros from the concert film "INNI"

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-8-12

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 1-8-12

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

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#12 Jenni Sperandeo – Dangerbird Records

Future Supabroad Jenni Sperandeo

Jenni Sperandeo’s move to Dangerbird Records has met with considerable success.

Dangerbird’s A&R is strong, with artists like Silversun Pickups, Sea Wolf, Hot Hot Heat, Butch Walker, Ben Lee, and Oasis-spinoff Beady Eye.

But it was the unlikely rise of Fitz and the Tantrums that gets Jenni kudos.

Let’s be honest, nobody in radio was sitting in a music meeting thinking, “Man, an LA-based retro-soul band is exactly what we need right now — if someone would just give it to us!”

Perhaps it was her master use of different colored fonts in her emails. Perhaps it was just good ol’ fashioned hustle.

#11 Steve Yasko and WTMD

WTMD's Steve Yasko

This one’s easy, WTMD put up the numbers in 2011.

Finding a sweet spot with plenty of new music without being too hip for the room, the station increased its audience from around 90,000 to a current cume of 129,000

Huge.

See their Top 89 of 2011 for a snapshot of what worked in Baltimore.

#10 The Coalition of Independent Music Stores

Mom and Pops of all stripes have struggled in the recession, and the physical music variety was no exception.

The loss of Ear X-Stacy in Louisville was gut-wrenching. But CIMS kept moving forward, adding a special-product-driven Black Friday to complement the annual Record Store Day each April.

Bonus points for the CIMS “spinoff” Junketboy Records and distribution, which has put out projects from Josh Ritter, Government Mule, Matisyahu, Mazzy Star and many more.

Michael Bunnell, Scott Register, and the whole crew are music lovers to the core, doing the communities served by Mom and Pops a huge service.

#9 Anti-/Epitaph Records

Krystal Robbins has been with Anti-/Epitaph for more than a decade.

Last week, Anti-/Epitaph had three albums on The Top 22 Public Radio Albums chart with Wilco, Kate Bush, and Tom Waits.

In addition to those vets, Anti-’s roster is becoming a who’s who of Adult Rock critics’ darlings, ranging from Joe Henry, Marketa Iglova, William Elliott Whitmore, Bob Mould, Mavis Staples, Spoon, Michael Franti, and more.

And then there’s the harder rocking Epitaph, now home to Weezer and Social Distortion, among others.

As artists of a certain sales range have been cast off by majors or otherwise wanted to go independent, Anti- has thrown down the welcome mat. The slogan says it all: Real artists making great recordings on their own terms.

#8 Birmingham Mountain Radio

Workaholic: In addition to work with CIMS and Junketboy, Scott "Reg" Register does mornings on Birmingham Mountain Radio.

This is not a revolution. This is a solution.

So says the website of Birmingham Mountain Radio.

When commercial radio bailed out on AAA and alternative in the market, and no public station was interested, the folks behind Birmingham Mountain Radio didn’t just gripe about it, they created an alternate universe.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that, considering the success of Pandora, a hyper-local online/mobile music stream could be a winner. Ideas are easy, execution is hard.

With a little funding, a cool artist playspace called Workplay, and a very hungry market, BMR has now reached its first birthday — and is now cash-flow positive.

PD Geno Pearson, Reg, and a handful of others know how to execute, and they understand community.

Birmingham, Alabama is one of those mid-sized cities that corporate America loves to use as a test market.

If BMR becomes a success here, where else might a well-programmed, non-comm-style, hyper-local radio stream work?

We can think of plenty of candidates.

I’m rethinking my relationship with Amazon.

I’m a heavy user. Almost not a single day goes by without a UPS truck delivering something to the house from Amazon.

Using Amazon Prime, the membership that offers free shipping, I constantly use the service to deliver otherwise hard-to-find items. I figured, that UPS truck would be on the road anyway, so it might even be green for me to use Amazon rather than get in the car and start driving all over creation.

My family uses Amazon streaming services for movies via our Roku box, and the sister-site to TheTop22, TheBluesMobile.com is an Amazon affiliate. We make only loose change on our referral fees, instead seeing it as a great way to get more blues CDs and downloads sold in an environment where physical blues titles are hard to get your hands on.

But I’m starting to think very differently about Amazon these days, and the promotion they’ve unleashed for Saturday, December 10, is only adding fuel my new line of thinking.

On Saturday, Amazon is encouraging people to head to retail, snap pictures or scan bar codes with its price comparing mobile app, then walk out — in exchange for $5 off as many as three different products.

That’s right, Amazon will pay you to spy for them.

It’s no secret that Amazon has been at war with retail since it crushed booksellers. In addition to massive volume discounts, the online retailer makes no bones about selling things below cost — from Lady Gaga to the Kindle Fire. But that’s just business. People have used loss-leaders forever.

But Amazon has a patently unfair advantage over brick and mortar stores by not having to charge sales tax in most areas.

Saturday’s promotion goes too far. It’s not about price comparison so much as it’s about flipping your local retailer the bird — and they want you to do it for them.

Think of it this way: the local retailer invests in the facility, personnel (your neighbors), expertise, and the community — all things that cost money. Not to mention they pay local taxes. Yet Amazon wants you to take advantage of that — literally take advantage of them — by viewing and touching the product, getting your questions answered etc.

And then walk out and buy the product from Amazon. This feels sleazy.

This is Walmart all over again. The big box retailer was punished repeatedly for killing Main Street, but for some reason, Amazon has escaped the same fate.

Amazon is in court all over America — even trying to re-write California’s tax code — in order to keep their sales tax exemptions. Meanwhile, our Main Streets are increasingly deserted, jobs are hard to find, and local governments start looking for ways to make up shortfalls.

And that’s the connection people are failing to make. They think they’re saving money by shaving off a few bucks off products by evading sales tax. But then, as your kids’ school lays off teachers, you get hit with a a nice property tax hike.

Amazon is on the wrong end of this argument. Tactics like this will result in sales-killing negative PR and perhaps start turning the tide in favor of local retailers.If this story were to get picked up by national news, think of the value of that negative press.

Amazon has enough going for it to win on service, extraordinary variety, and convenience. The company should suck it up and start collecting sales taxes.

Fair is fair.

Special thanks to Michael Bunnell of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, who actually has a dog in this fight, for getting me thinking on this topic. His email was as follows:

Today I was sent a link to a story about an Amazon promotion to encourage use of their bar code scanning application. They are offering a $5 incentive to their customers to go into physical stores, scan bar codes, and supply Amazon with the store’s pricing information and then buy the item from them. Of course the promotion is being sold as a consumer friendly option that allows them to beat every other retailer’s prices. Now let’s face facts here–this is nothing more than an attempt to steal local customers and steer them to online sales from what amounts to the biggest box store of all. It is an attack upon physical retailers everywhere. Retailers who pay local taxes and who pay rent to local landlords and hire local workers, who in turn spend their wages to support the local economy, providing support for schools, police departments, roads, libraries, fire departments–everything we all take for granted. Prompting consumers to spy on other retailers with the promise of a monetary incentive is underhanded and amounts to industrial spying. It uses modern technology to the advantage of a single entity and to the disadvantage of the rest of the retail businesses who actually pay the bills that support the communities we all live in.

It’s just wrong.

Our second big Kate Bush photo this week, but who's complaining?

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 11-27-11

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 11-27-11

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

Posted with permission.

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 11-20-11

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 11-20-11

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

How about a box set of Beatles 7″ singles, with a limited run of 10,000, or a limited edition of Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia Demos Part 1 on 10″ vinyl (only 4000 made)?

Perhaps The Black Keys’ smash single Lonely Boy as a 7″ single?

These are just a few of the 50 or so limited edition items, virtually all vinyl, that are available starting on Black Friday exclusively at independent music retailers throughout the U.S. and Europe.

While the number of titles available is a fraction of the group’s annual Record Store Day, it serves as another friendly reminder that these local music retailers are a treasure that should be supported.

After all, it was just yesterday that NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story on the loss of Louisville’s Ear X-tacy (a must-listen here).

Tom Petty's "Kiss My Amps" features seven live tracks from the Mojo tour on vinyl.

You may have recently seen a major campaign, supported by a credit card company, that encourages people to “shop small” this holiday season — supporting those local mom and pops rather than big box retailers. One has to think this idea was inspired by Record Store Day.

Giving the gift of music is always a great thing, and supporting a local mom and pop makes it that much better.

So grab the full list of titles here, and visit the Record Store Day site to find a store near you.

As with past events, Chris Brown of Bull Moose in Maine, gives a rundown of what’s available…

Part 1

Part 2

Tom Waits photo by Jesse Dylan for Badasme.com

The Top 22 Selling CDs at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 10-30-11

The Top 22 Selling Vinyl Albums and Singles at the Coalition of Independent Music Stores for the Week Ending 10-30-11

Download The Top 200 CDs and Top 50 Vinyl Charts here.

Posted with Permission.