This is the first in a series of article about The New Music Business.

To get us started on this topic of The New Music Business I’d thought we talk about an article that appeared in the New York Times a couple days ago titled, The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor. It’s the story of a Rap/R&B trio that recently signed a “record” contract for two songs. You read that right. They aren’t recording an album, just two songs. Why?

Only true fans are buying full albums. Most people don’t really do that anymore.

The article goes on to say that consumers who purchase music digitally (i.e. downloads) are buying way more individual tracks than they are whole albums. The margin is 19 to 1. Even if you consider that a whole album download contains 10-12 songs, there are still more tracks purchased individually than there are corporately, in the digital download market.

To be fair we must admit that physical CD sales still outweigh download sales. But for how long? We recently reported that CD sales, which have been steadily declining for the last seven years, dropped by 20% the first quarter of this year, while sales of digital tracks have increased by 16 percent during the same time period.

Paul Resnikoff, editor of Digital Music News gives his explanation for why the trend will continue. (more…)

A lot has been said recently about the business of music here on The Bluegrass Blog. We have covered the recent changes in copyright legislation surrounding internet broadcasting. We’ve also recently talked about the decline in sales of physical CDs in the overall music industry.

While this blog is mainly concerned with news about bluegrass music, we find these topics important ourselves, and feel that the state of the industry as a whole is important to our many readers who are involved with bluegrass music on a financial level. Ours is a small genre that does differ in many ways from the mainstream music industry, but ultimately we are still impacted by changes to the overall music business.

Like it or not the industry is changing. What exactly are those changes? How will they affect bluegrass music professionals? What about the fans? Will the changes be for the better, or worse? These are just some of the questions you may be asking yourself.

In an effort to answer these questions, I have undertaken the task of writing a series of articles discussing recent changes/trends in the music business, and giving some concrete ideas and examples of how bluegrass bands large and small can navigate these changes and take advantage of the opportunities they might provide.

I’m calling this series of articles The New Music Business and will begin each post title with NMB. I encourage you to share you thoughts, ideas, and questions in the comments section of each post as we go along. Let’s get started!

The David Grisman Quintet has announced that noted jazz guitarist Frank Vignola will be joining the group.

Frank has been working as a professional musician since he was in his teens, doing clubs and sessions in and around his native New York City. He recorded and toured with a number of big selling artists, but drew attention to himself when he launched a Hot Club Of France tribute band in 1988, a group which has been credited as sparking the resurgence of interest in the music of Django Reinhardt in the United States.

He started a recording career with Concord Jazz in 1993, and released several projects there and on other labels, but captured the attention of acoustic music fans as a member of Mark O’Connor’s Hot Swing group. He has a CD with Casey Dreissen and Matt Flinner called Gyspy Grass which mixes bluegrass and Django-inspired influences.

Vignola has also produced a number of instructional projects for Mel Bay, including books, CDs, DVDs and downloadable video lessons. Frank’s newest CD, Vignola Plays Gershwin, is on the Mel Bay label.

Samples of Frank Vignola’s music can be found in the iTunes Music Store, and on his web site.

The tour schedule for The David Grisman Quinet can be found on their site.