Nielsen SoundScan, the entertainment industry’s data information system that tracks point-of-purchase sales of recorded music product, Nielsen BDS, the music industry’s leading music performance monitoring service, and Nielsen RingScan, which tracks mobile ringtone purchases, have announced their 2008 U.S. year-end sales and performance monitoring data for the 52-week period December 31, 2007 through December 28, 2008.

2008 Year End Factoids:

* Music purchases in 2008 reached 1.5 Billion, marking the fourth consecutive year music sales have exceeded 1 billion; 1.4 billion (2007) vs. 1.2 billion (2006) vs. 1 billion (2005).
* Music sales exceeded 65 million in the final week of 2008, representing the biggest sales week in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. The previous record was Christmas week 2007 with 58.4 million music purchases.
* Overall Album sales (including Albums and Track Equivalent Album sales) declined 8.5% compared to 2007.
* Total Album sales declined 14% compared to 2007.
* Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” is the best selling Internet album for the year with 144,000 sales.
* During 2008, more Vinyl Albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. The previous record was in 2000, with 1.5 million LP album sales.
* Note that more than 2 out of every 3 vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store during the year.

Digital Factoids:
* Digital Track sales break the 1 BILLION sales mark for the first time with more than 1,070,000 digital track sales. The previous record was 844 million digital track purchases during 2007; an increase of 27% over 2007.
* Digital Album sales reached an all-time high with more than 65 million sales in 2008; up from 50 million in 2007; an increase of 32% over the previous year.
* Note that digital album sales account for 15% of total album sales compared to 10% in 2007 and 5.5% in 2006.
* In the final reporting week of 2008 the following digital sales records were broken:
* Digital Track sales surpassed 47.7 million. The previous sales record was 42.9 million, week of 12/23 -12/30/07.
* Digital Album sales this week broke the two million mark for the first time with sales of 2.4 million sales; breaking the previous record of 1.9 million (12/30/07).
* The top 200 digital songs for the week posted an all-time high with 13.6 million sales; breaking the previous record of 11.9 million during the last week of 2007.
* The first time that the Top 5 digital songs (combining all versions of the same song) sold more than 300,000 downloads in a week with Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” selling 419,000. The record for most downloads for a digital song in one week continues to be Flo Rida’s “Low” with sales of 467,000 set during the last week of 2007.
* 2008 is the first time a digital song broke the 3 million sales mark in a single year. There were 2 songs that achieved this milestone; Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” and Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop;” with sales of 3.4 and 3.2 million respectively.
* In 2008, there are 19 different digital songs with sales that exceeded 2 million compared to 9 in 2007.
* 71 Digital Songs exceed the 1 million sales mark for the year compared to 41 digital songs in 2007, 22 in 2006, and only 2 digital songs in 2005.
* Rihanna is the biggest selling digital artist in 2008 with nearly 10 million track sales compared to Fergie in 2007 who had 7.5 million track sales.
* There are more than 450,000 different physical albums that sold at least one copy over the Internet during 2008 compared to 390,000 in 2007.

Best Seller Factoids:
* Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III is the biggest selling album of the year with 2.8 million sales.
* Taylor Swift is the biggest selling solo artist, with sales greater than 4.0 million albums and AC/DC is the biggest selling group in 2008 with sales of 3.4 million.
* Taylor Swift stands at the top of the list, marking the 2nd time in the last three years that a country artist is the top selling artist for the year. Rascal Flatts was the biggest selling artist in 2006 with 5 million sales. Josh Groban took the honors last year (2007) with 4.8 million sales.
* Taylor Swift’s Fearless and her self-titled album finished the year at #3 and #6 respectively with sales of 2.1 and 1.5 million. This is the first time in the history of Nielsen SoundScan one artist had two different albums in the Top 10 on the year end album chart

Holiday SeasonFactoids: (last 6 weeks of year).
* Overall Album sales during the 2008 holiday season were down 19% compared to 2007, with sales of just over 80 million.
* Album sales during the holiday season accounted for 19% of all album sales for the year.
* Digital Album sales during the holiday season experienced significant growth over 2007 with an increase of 37% to 9.9 million sales.

Strata Factoids:
* Album sales at Non-Traditional music outlets (digital, internet, mail order, venue, non-traditional retailers) hit an all-time high in 2008 with sales breaking the 100 million mark for the first time. Non-Traditional is the only strata that experienced album growth over the previous year; with an increase of 15% over 2007.
* Non-traditional outlets account for nearly 25% of all album sales, compared to 18% in 2007, 12% in 2006, 9% in 2005 and 5% in 2004 (4% in 2003).
* Digital services account for 65% of the Non-Traditional album sales.
* The last two weeks of the year produced the two biggest album sales weeks for Non-Traditional outlets; 3.3 and 3.2 million sales.
* The percentage of album sales at mass merchants declined for the second straight year after experiencing year over year growth from 2002 � 2006. In 2008, 37% of all albums purchased were at a Mass Merchant outlet compared to 40% in 2007, 41% in 2006, 40% in 2005.
* Chain music stores account for 33% of all album sales in 2008; compared to 36% in 2007; 41% in 2006, 45% in 2005 and 48% in 2004.
* Album sales at Independent music stores account for 7% of all album sales; up 1 point from a year ago (6% in 2007 and 2006, 7% in 2005 and 9% in 2004).

On this week’s show Pete features the video for ‘Sweet Lies’ from Booka Shade, the video for ‘Radar’ from Riz MC, the Prins Thomas remix of ‘Vamp’ from Outlander, ‘Kalimba’ from Steve Lawler, an exclusive interview with Parisian DJ and producer Terry, a competition to win copies of Secretsundaze  Vol. II and the Bedroom Bedlam Top 3 Chart.

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There’s nothing funnier than a great Saturday Night Live digital short. This one, “Jizz In My Pants” is a hilarious music video about premature ejaculation. Since Netmix is generally a music oriented blog, we thought you might enjoy this humorous spoof on pop music videos. It’s got the prerequesite DJ mixing it up in the background, even in a rain shower. Soprano’s actress Jamie-Lynn DiScala makes a guest appearance. Enjoy!

– by Tony Z

[Show as slideshow]

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Due to the Nor’easter that cut across New York State, I was stuck in Long Island with not much to do. I checked my Facebook to see what people were doing during the storm. Up popped a message from Tommy T, a long time friend of Netmix. He let me know that he would be DJing at a modern, upscale sushi bar and lounge, Nisent in Woodbury, NY. The location is about 15 minutes from my office at Zaah in Farmingdale.

For a blustery Friday night, there wasn’t much going on. So it was good to see Tommy and his friends celebrating Melissa’s (we don’t have her last name) birthday. I figured I’d pop over and check it out

Stay tuned, as Tommy and I might plan to do something together on Long Island, at this spot, in the future. It’s an incredible space. Loft-like with a killer sound system. The kitchen was closed by the time I’d arrived, so I’ll have to play food critic another time.

Props to all the Long Island folks I met last night at Nisen. Enjoy the photos!

– by Tony Z

Aqua-Booty Party

DJ Greg Cuoco has relaunched his legendary Aqua-Booty party at Sin Sin, the upstairs room at Leopard Lounge on 2nd Avenue and E. 5th St. Tonight, Greg will share the tables with prolific producer and keyboardist, Eric Kupper. The event is hosted by long time dance music industry oracle, Debra Eriksen.

Aqua-Booty was a necessary stop for many underground house music DJs in mid to late 90’s. Given focus has been so much on trance and tribal house at some of the larger venues in New York City, it’s nice to see that some folks are bringing that underground, New York house sound back.

The party will take place the third Thursday of every month. Upcoming DJs include Tony Humphries, Scott Wozniak and Oscar P.

Also tonight, Roger Sanchez is back at Cielo for his Secret Soul Sessions party. This event is probably the most heavily attended house music night in the city, save for certain parties at Pacha. It’s best to come out early. Don’t wait until 12 midnight, because you might be turned away at the door. For more information, check out the event’s Facebook page.

If you miss out tonight, check out Scott Wozniak’s and Luis Baro’s party, Moonshine, downstairs at SB2 on Friday nights. For more information, hit up their Facebook event page.

– by Tony Z

Did you know that developers creating Flash applications can use the .swf object to store cookies in your browser? These session “cookies” are stored on your computer and can, for example, remember where you left off during your last session.

This is quite useful if you close your browser in the middle of using a Flash application, like a photo book creator or online music sequencer.

The session cookie remembers things like how much of the book you’ve completed, what photos you’ve used and and other important settings. It then restores your session to the point you left off. This is especially useful if your browser crashes while you’re working on something.

From time to time, you may want to dump your Flash cookies. One would think that would be accomplished in the same way you clear the browser cache, which is usually accomplished through the browsers Preferences or Tools panel, but hat’s not the case.

This task must be accomplished online on the Adobe web site using the  Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager.

Using the Settings Manager, you can do the following:

• Specify whether websites must ask your permission before using your camera or microphone.
• Specify the amount of disk space that websites you haven’t yet visited can use to store information on your computer, or to prevent websites you haven’t yet visited from storing information on your computer.
• View or change your security settings.
• Specify if and how often Flash Player should check for updated versions.
• To view or change the privacy settings for websites you have already visited.
• To view or change the storage settings for websites you have already visited, or to delete information that any or all websites have already stored on your computer.

– Tony Z

From Germany comes this new hard dance style they call the Melbourne Shuffle. Pretty cool. Would love to see it over here in the U.S.

–Tony Z.

You want to see something crazy. Just watch this old Prodigy concert, live from Moscow. It was uploaded to YouTube on May 3, 2007.

I’ve never seen a crowd like this in my life, but then again, I’ve never been to a Prodigy concert.

The track is “Their Law.”

Don’t forget, the Prodigy have a new album coming out called “Invaders Must Die.” It’ll be coming out in early 2009.

– Tony Z.

Mighty 44 - Push it

My man in the office, Elmar, just hipped us to this old video from Scandinavian group, Mighty 44. It’s a cover of Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s “Push It”. Pretty hot. I can’t believe we never heard it. Love the guitar riffs…baby, babaaaay!

– Tony Z.

Here’s a recorded UStream.TV DJ battle from my friends over at John Jay College.

– by Tony Z.

YouTube - Rihanna - Rehab

Rehab is the latest from pop superstar, Rihanna. Enjoy the video!

Update 12/14: It seems that Universal Music Group has asked YouTube to disable the ability to embed videos on third party web sites like this one. Since UMG wants to control the distribution of their content, we will no longer be able to post UMG videos on our web site via YouTube.

Instead of deleting or changing this post, we’re going to leave this here so you can see how UMG is forcing you to go to YouTube to watch their videos, instead of being able to view them where and when you want. Just another control tactic to force you, the consumer, to kneel at the behest of the almighty Universal Music Group. Another reason to support independent music.

– by Tony Z.

We were reminiscing with friends about the impact Freestyle had on dance music from the mid-80’s to the early 90’s. With that in mind, we thought we’d dig into the YouTube vault and see what we could come up with. Here are 5 fun tracks from that period. We dug up Noel, Debbie Deb, TKA, George Lamond and Sweet Sensation.

Fancy yourself a Pete Tong fan? You can now see more of the famous British DJ via his new video blog outlet, PeteTong.tv. Hosted by Tong himself, the show spotlights his top ten chunes and features interviews and commentary.

Hey, scratch DJs. Always wanted to know how to set your stylus properly? Here’s a decent YouTube tutorial video on how to zero our and balance your tone arm and set your stylus weight properly to keep your needle from skipping during your performance.