#sales and streams

[jimin-updates]

Jimin surpasses 14 billion on-demand streams!

This is across music platforms, around the world:

Jimin is the second-most streamed K-soloist of all time!

[badolmen]

People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.

For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.

The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.

So yes, I’m going to pirate and support piracy.

Edit: if you are able, use $5 you would otherwise use for a streaming subscription to donate to a GazaFunds campaign.

[pearlore]

things brought up from below

[cerealsnail]

my favoritest most specialest guy.. ₍ᐢ･⚇･ᐢ₎

[petalpxl]

🐰 bunny channel points icon 🐰

[phoenixyfriend]

Updated Affiliate Shopfront on Bookshop.org - includes March sales (as of 3/8/25)

Heya folks! If you weren't aware, I do have an affiliate storefront on Bookshop.org. If you purchase a book on the site, a small portion of the profit (about 10%) goes to me, at no extra cost to you. You can also adjust your 'source' bookshop to be an actual local bookstore to your area, and they'll get that commission money (more of it, 30%) instead of me. Actual bookstores are definitely presenting a wider variety than I am, also.

I have updated my own storefront to include the current sales. Here are some of the lists I've got, if you're interested in purchasing anything and giving me that wee kickback.

The two preorder book sales I'm sure tumblr is most interested in right now are these:

Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip by B. Dylan Hollis (Author)

Everything Is Tuberculosis (Signed Edition): The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green (Author)

Here's some lists! Curated by the site:

Sales by the Site - March 2025

Regularly Discounted: Manga

Curated by me:

Trade Paperbacks (if you don't know that term, they are collected issues of comic books, e.g. issues 1-5 of Young Avengers (2012) is one TP)

Nonfiction - Fashion

Nonfiction - City History and Planning

Nonfiction - Other

[byuniart]

Not going to be taking on more full commissions atm, but for black friday I'll be doing some discounted sketches.

This will be only on Friday, Saturday and Monday, and you can see them all done here https://picarto.tv/Byuni

[bipedalcapybara]

Hey Guys I Will Protect This White Girl With My Life

[finnickodaiir]

God take all of my mutuals' suffering and give it to the annoying Billie stans on Instagram who won't shut up about how her album got more streams than Cowboy Carter....

[croch-eeth-et]

crochetsune miku my beautiful daughter

[homestarrunner]

The Dangeresque game is on sale and they’ve got a new RigRug minigame!

It’s $3.99 right now, what do you got to lose?

[jimin-updates]

MUSE was the 9th-highest selling album of the year 🌟

And the fourth-highest selling album by a male artist:

Congratulations, Jimin! 🥳

[dreamings-free]

It's not just the Black Keys. Why are so many big tours selling poorly? Stereogum | June 11, 2024 | by Zach Schonfeld

long (and US focused) but still quite interesting article on the current state of concert touring, why tours are getting cancelled or downsized, and what's up with ticket pricing. (my selected excerpts/highlights under the cut)

[excerpt, all highlights mine]

[Eric Renner Brown, a senior editor at Billboard] adds, “I do think [The Black Keys] are an artist that can fill those rooms still. I think the demand is there in terms of people who want to see Black Keys. But perhaps at that price point, the demand was not there.”

Ostensibly, agents and promoters should have access to data that can give them a better sense of demand. But they often place outsized importance on raw streaming numbers.

“The data is very confusing,” says the anonymous booking agent. “There’s a lot of passive listeners for data. You can have millions upon millions of streams, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna turn into tickets. The opposite is, there are some artists who don’t have many streams at all and they can sell like 2,000, 3,000 tickets.”

[..]

It’s worth noting that the Black Keys have released four albums since returning from hiatus in 2019, and toured arenas as recently as 2022. This may be a case of oversaturating the market.

The band’s 2019 and 2022 arena runs weren’t exactly sold out. In between, the band left their longtime manager in 2021, signing with Irving Azoff and Steve Moir at Full Stop Management. Some sources speculate that Azoff, a former CEO of Ticketmaster, may have encouraged ambitious touring plans. On Thursday, Billboard reported that the group has now parted ways with Azoff and Moir. (The management company did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Essentially, you have some very big managers that are out of touch with the granular finesse and nuance of ticketing,” says another anonymous booking agent. “And they have these large expectations and they tell their agents what they want. And the agents are probably texting each other on the side, going, ‘This man is out of his fucking mind.’ But they do it anyway because, in the case of Black Keys, they’re not gonna challenge Irving Azoff.”

[..]

One contributing factor to instability in the touring industry is the rising cost of… well, everything. It’s part of why ticket prices are so high; it’s also part of the reason some acts are backing out of touring commitments.

Bands at all levels have been sounding the alarm about this for years. In 2022, for instance, Animal Collective canceled European tour dates and explained, “We simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could.”

Industry insiders say that’s not uncommon. “Everything is ridiculously expensive,” says a tour manager who works with major acts and asked not to be named. “There’s not enough gear for everyone to share, so the vendors are having to pay high amounts for equipment. A single bus for a six-week tour can cost $100,000. Multiple that by multiple buses, and then trucks, and then crews are at a minimum, so they’re getting top rate right now because there’s not enough crews.”

COVID, of course, exacerbated this crunch. “What happened after the pandemic is, everyone was ready to tour at once,” the tour manager says. “There’s not enough gear to cover all of that. A lot of bands have had to cancel tours because they don’t have gear or they couldn’t afford the gear,” the tour manager continued. “I was on a tour with somebody last year where we had to book a private jet because there were no buses available. For the first week of the tour, we had to charter planes.”

Acts are thus incentivized to book bigger venues to recoup the costs of touring. The catch-22 is that bigger venues necessitate more elaborate stage production, which makes for a more expensive tour.

“There’s the expectation to have that production,” says the tour manager. “If people went back to having just two trusses of lights and a P.A. and no frills, it was just about the music, they can afford to tour. But everyone wants to see those flashing lights. Everyone wants to see that video.”

“So much of the economics of these big tours is completely invisible to fans and consumers,” says Kevin Erickson, director of Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. “You can sell out a tour and come back in the red if there was a cost overrun or a miscalculation.”

For mid-level acts with sizable followings, these frustrations are compounded by a lack of suitable mid-sized venues.

“For a band that maybe has assessed its demand in the market to be in the 8K range or something for capacity, where are they going to go if that sort of venue doesn’t exist?” says Brown. “And if, say, the local theater that seats 3K or 4K can’t accommodate two or three nights, it can only put them for one night on the tour routing. That’s a real concern.”

[..]

At the end of the day, it all comes back to price. The average ticket price for one of the top 100 tours rose from $91.86 to $122.84 between 2019 and 2023. Concerts are too damn expensive, and there’s a growing sense of consumer frustration with shows that cost as much as airline tickets.

-> read the full article here on Stereogum.com

[spiritproductionsart]

Budgie PNGTubers are up on my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/spiritpd/shop

Also comes in Blue and Periwinkle!

[phoenixyfriend]

Updated Affiliate Shopfront on Bookshop.org - includes February sales

Heya folks! If you weren't aware, I do have an affiliate storefront on Bookshop.org. If you purchase a book on the site, a small portion of the profit (about 10%) goes to me, at no extra cost to you. You can also adjust your 'source' bookshop to be an actual local bookstore to your area, and they'll get that commission money (more of it, 30%) instead of me. Actual bookstores are definitely presenting a wider variety than I am, also. You may want to change that to a black-owned bookstore for Black History Month.

I have updated my own storefront to include the current sales. Here are some of the lists I've got, if you're interested in purchasing anything and giving me that wee kickback.

Curated by the site:

Sales by the Site - February 2025

Regularly Discounted: Manga

Curated by me:

Trade Paperbacks (if you don't know that term, they are collected issues of comic books, e.g. issues 1-5 of Young Avengers (2012) is one TP)

Nonfiction - Fashion

Nonfiction - City History and Planning

Nonfiction - Other

[inuamaru]

✨✨Ko-fi Sketch Streams!!✨✨

Friday and Saturday Sept 6th and 7th 1pm (EST)

!!!SALE STREAM!!!

✨Don't forget your ref in the Ko-fi request!✨ $10 for a sketch and $17 for colour! STREAM HERE