Across the Business Wire today is the trumpeting that Miley Cyrus has two albums in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200; a feat last achieved by the late Ray Charles. The two albums would be the now triple-platinum Hannah Montana 2 / Meet Miley Cyrus and the new Best of Both Worlds Concert CD + DVD. That is not so amazing—considering the awesomeness of the material and the low-key advertising—but it is amazing to me when one considers that the Best of Both Worlds Concert CD+ DVD is exclusively available from Wal-Mart (Hannah Montana Headquarters). The concert album is ranked #42 in sales on Amazon.com at the moment and they can’t even ship it until April 15th.
This almost seems like a no-brainer when you consider the Disney + Miley Cyrus + Wal-Mart equation, but it’s fascinating to me that just one retailer can move enough units to push two albums into the Top 10.
The other day when I was entering my CDs into Lala.com I pondered whatever happened to M2M. I was very fond of them back in 1999 and 2000. I knew their second album wasn’t as well received in 2002 and I remember their label web site shutting down the following year or so. Now I find out that both Marion and Marit both have done solo albums. I immediately rushed over to Virgin Megastore and bought the import CDs.
Marion Raven’s Here I Am is a pretty good rock affair of an album, sort of Avril Lavinge-ish. She also did a duet with Meat Loaf of It’s All Coming Back To Me Now (YouTube). I recall seeing the Meat Loaf music video in passing but never realized it was Marion! Here is the music video (YouTube) for the title track on Here I Am.
The real gem though is Marit Larsen’s new album Under the Surface. You can tell she is the one with real songwriting talent out of the two. I only need to link the music video (WMV) for the title track to convince you. The whole album is very creative. Her voice has matured immensely in the last six years and I’d compare her to Leigh Nash. Leigh also happens to have a new solo album out post-Sixpence None The Richer, but I haven’t picked it up yet.
Earlier this week I came across this ArsTechnica review of Lala.com and decided to sign up myself. I love it! The tl;dr version is that you can list what CDs you have available to trade and others do the same. You also list what CDs you want. Lala finds matches and facilitates trades. You send out a CD that someone has on their want list, and in return someone that has a CD on your want list sends theirs. Lala takes care of the envelopes and postage for CDs you mail out, and it costs you $1.75 for each disc you receive in trades. $0.75 goes to pay for shipping, and $1.00 goes to Lala. They also set aside 20% of their revenues to go to the artists as a goodwill gesture. The site is very well done when it comes to discovering new music, and most albums have samples available.
Since signing up I have made 13 trades, I’m just waiting on some of my shipped CDs to be marked received so I can send some more. I heartily recommend this service to anyone interested in trading some of their CDs for fresh music.