Vampire Weekend sold 134k copies of their new album ‘Modern Vampires of the City’ in its first week. The album was not available on streaming music services like Spotify. Are those two facts connected? It’s a sign of the suspicion of streaming in some quarters that Digital Music News is making a point of suggesting there is. “This is why ‘windowing’ could become a very serious problem for streaming services in the future. Because even though Spotify insists that streaming has no negative impact on download sales, a large number of artists and labels aren’t buying it. And, in the case of Vampire Weekend, it’s really hard to argue with success.” We’ll have a try: David Bowie, Mumford & Sons, Bruno Mars, One Direction and – this week – Daft Punk are all examples of high-profile albums that sold well in their first week AND were available to stream. Taylor Swift sits alongside Vampire Weekend as a streaming-holdout that sold well. The debate about streaming cannibalisation rumbles on, but personal prejudice isn’t looking like the best way to settle it. The main conclusion from all the artists above is that prominent iTunes promotions are good for generating first-week sales, whether an album is streaming or not.
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…