iTunes Issues 2014 Year-End Charts

Today iTunes issued its year-end bestsellers chart. Above is this year's top ten for digital singles. The soundtrack to Disney's Frozen tops the list for downloaded albums, followed closely by Taylor Swift's 1989 and Coldplay's Ghost Stories. The top three downloaded movies: Frozen, The Lego Movie, and The Wolf Of Wall Street. The top three downloaded television shows: Game Of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Downton Abbey. Billboard Magazine's definitive 2014 recap of physical and digital music sales will come later this month.

Church Threatens To Sue "I'm Not Gay No More" Man Over iTunes Release

Via TMZ:

The church where the "I'm Not Gay No More" guy went straight is not only intolerant toward gays, they have an intense dislike for people who steal their tunes. The Church of God in Christ insists Andrew Caldwell call in the lawyers because their now-famous parishioner jazzed up his hilarious moment with background singers and released it on iTunes. A church honcho says they're ordering him to stop hawking the song partly because they own the audio, but also because they feel Andrew is making a mockery of the service ... and that's hilarious. But Andrew's calling BS, telling TMZ he's copyrighted the song. And he says it's his voice and he -- not even God -- can claim ownership of it.

Here's a snippet of the single.

Lady Gaga Live At iTunes Festival

The full 71-minute show.

(Tipped by JMG reader Ray)

The CD Turns 30

NPR Music takes note:

Today marks the 30th anniversary of a musical format many of us grew up with: the compact disc. It's been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just the latest musical format to rise and fall in roughly the same 30-year cycle. Compact discs had been pressed before 1982, but the first CD to officially go on sale was Billy Joel's 52nd Street.

I haven't purchased or even played a CD in a very long time. How about you?

iTunes Outs Queen Latifah

She may say NO but iTunes says YES. See her album listed on the lower right of their gay pride page, along with out artists Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert, and Scissor Sisters. (Tipped by JMG reader Brian)

Whitney Tops iTunes Album Charts

Source.

Open Thread Thursday

What's the most-played track in your iTunes?

Apple Ends Christianist Affiliation

Apple has pulled their iTunes store from a Christianist site that funds anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council. This move comes after pressure from petition site Change.org convinced other major companies such as the BBC to end their affiliations as well.

Apple has removed their iTunes store from the “Christan Values Network” (CVN.org) after more than 22,000 people signed a petition on Change.org started by Ben Crowther, a student and Apple customer concerned about CVN’s funding of anti-gay, anti-women organizations like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. The Apple campaign, which picked up significant momentum after 13,000 AllOut.org members signed another petition on Thursday, follows Microsoft’s decision to leave CVN two weeks ago, prompted by another customer-driven campaign on Change.org. Several other companies have removed their online stores since then, including REI, Macy's, Delta Airlines, BBC America, and Wells Fargo.

Apple Unveils iCloud

At today's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs gave up the details of the company's much-discussed cloud-based music service.

The new iCloud service replaces Apple's MobileMe document-sharing offering, which cost $99 a year. The new iCloud service is free and available now with an iOS 4.3 update, Jobs said. With iCloud, content such as music and documents is stored on large servers instead of on personal hard drives—and is accessible from anywhere through the Internet. Apple will provide 5 gigabytes of free storage for mail, documents and backup. The new iCloud service is Apple's seal of approval of what many experts believe is the next major iteration of the digital world.

Seems About Right

(Source)

Apple To Launch iCloud

Apple is set to launch a cloud-based music player that will scan a user's home iTunes library and then make those tracks available from any web device.

Apple has signed deals with Warner Music Group Corp., Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group Ltd. and expects to sign a fourth with Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group this week. The agreements will let Apple offer an easy way for consumers to create and listen online to their entire music collections, without the time-consuming work of manually transferring or uploading songs. Many in the music industry see such offerings as a key next step in the evolution of digital media, in which music, and eventually video, is convenient and ubiquitous. Apple wouldn't be the first company to offer such a service, but its standing as the world's largest music retailer and more than 200 million iTunes accounts would give it clout that others have lacked.

The cost of the service has not yet been disclosed.

Amazon Sells Gaga For 99 Cents

In a smackdown squarely aimed at iTunes, today Amazon began selling Lady Gaga's new full-length album for a mere 99 cents. The release is priced at $11.99 on iTunes. Amazon's sale is for today only.

It Was The Beatles

Meh. Hardly huge and definitely not unforgettable.

iTunes Has A "Huge" Announcement

Apple is teasing a "huge" announcement for iTunes that will make the product "unforgettable." Tech watchers are betting on a change to a cloud-based service in which your library would be hosted remotely, but accessible from any web-enabled device such as your iPhone. Others are guessing on a Zune-like subscription service in which you'd have access to all of iTunes for a flat monthly fee. Or it could be some combination of both.

Google To Compete With iTunes

Google is set to launch a music service expected to compete with industry pioneer iTunes.

Google is in talks with music labels on plans for a download store and a digital song locker that would allow its mobile users to play songs wherever they are as it steps up its rivalry with Apple, according to people familiar with the matter. Google’s Andy Rubin, the brains behind Google’s Android mobile operating system, has been leading conversations with the labels about what a new Google music service would look like, according to these sources. Rubin, Google’s vice president of engineering, hopes to have the service up and running by Christmas, two of these people said.

Earlier this year Apple bough the popular cloud-based music company LaLa and promptly shut it down, leading many to speculate that the next version of iTunes would be cloud-based. That was not the case.

iTunes Sells 10 Billionth Song

Apple has announced that iTunes saw its 10 billionth download yesterday. Here's the all-time iTunes top ten for singles.

1. Black Eyed Peas, "I Gotta Feeling"
2. Lady Gaga, "Poker Face"
3. Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"
4. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"
5. Coldplay, "Viva La Vida"
6. Lady Gaga, "Just Dance"
7. Flo Rida, "Low"
8. Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
9. Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"
10. Ke$ha, "Tick Tock"

All of the singles in the all-time top 25 were released in the last five years except for Journey's Don't Stop Believin', which is at #21 thanks to Glee.

iTunes' Top Downloads For 2009

I'm usually more interested in Billboard's year-end charts, which include physical and download sales, but here's what sold best on iTunes. I recognize half of the most popular singles, which is pretty good for me these days.

Top-Selling Songs:

“Boom Boom Pow,” Black Eyed Peas
“Right Round,” Flo Rida
“Poker Face,” Lady GaGa
“I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
“Gives You Hell,” The All-American Rejects
“Just Dance,” Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis
“Party in the U.S.A.,” Miley Cyrus
“The Climb,” Miley Cyrus
“Dead and Gone (feat. Justin Timberlake),” T.I.
“Use Somebody,” Kings of Leon

Top-Selling Albums:

Kings of Leon, “Only By the Night”
Various Artists, “Twilight (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”
Lady GaGa, “The Fame”
Taylor Swift, “Fearless”
Dave Matthews Band, “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King”
Michael Jackson, “The Essential Michael Jackson”
The Fray, “The Fray”
Jay-Z, “The Blueprint 3″
Eminem, “Relapse”
Black Eyed Peas, “The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies)”

DRM Continues To Lose Favor

Amazon announced today that they will launch all DRM-free music download site later this year, citing an agreement with EMI Group, who decided last month that all their music will now be unencumbered by digital rights management copy protection. Warner and Sony are also testing some DRM-free downloads. Tracks without DRM can be copied unlimited times and moved to any device, unlike most what you get on iTunes, who has faced increased criticism regarding their Fairplay DRM. (There are numerous sites out there that teach you how to crack Fairplay.) EMI tracks went DRM-free on iTunes last month. Some music industry experts think that an end to DRM on legal downloads may be the only savior of the spiraling music industry.