All encompassing technology
I used to live in California. I worked in a recording studio in San Francisco and played in punk rock bands. We played shows big and small from San Diego to Seattle and Japan.
I’ve wanted to record an album since I was two-years-old. That’s one reason I recorded other people’s music; I was determined to get my name in the liner notes of a record.
Liner notes – such a dated concept, right? Aside from vinyl enthusiasts, who buys physical records anymore?
Eminem's album, "Recovery," is the first record to sell over a million downloads.
Apparently more people than I thought, but that number is decreasing.
Fifty-three percent of all music in the U.S was purchased as physical discs and 43 percent of sales were digital downloads during the first quarter of 2011.
Those numbers were 57 percent and 43 percent, respectively, for the same time last year, according to the NPD group. But overall music sales are up for the first time since 2004.
The news isn’t as positive for books.
One report says physical sales were down anywhere from 23 to 42 percent last month, depending on the type of book. Meanwhile, e-book sales were up 157 percent for some companies.
Adult Fiction was hit hardest by e-book sales, according to Publishers Weekly.
Speaking of adults, the average age of a video-gamer is 37-years-old.
A few days ago, I watched my mother play “Bubble Shooter” for an hour on her iPhone. Afterward we discussed her high score at length. My mother joined AARP a few years ago and she never played video games while I was growing up.
Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski, left, and actor Ice-T introduce "Gears of War 3," the game will be released Sept. 20.
Total hardware and software sales for video games are up from last year. Over all sales were almost $6 billion but physical sales of video games are decreasing slightly and downloadable sales are increasing.
Over one million units of “Gears of War 3” have been preordered worldwide and it doesn’t hit the streets until September. In music, Adele’s new album, “21,” is the biggest album of the year; it has sold 2.5 million copies since February.
What does all of this mean? How does all of this affect local businesses?
I’ll answer those questions and more in the story I’m working on.
For the record, my name eventually made it into the liner notes of a few albums as a band member and an engineer.
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