Does Anyone Have This All Figured Out?

Jimmy Carter near Seattle

On vacation ... in the great NW ... went to a first-year Country music festival in far SW Oregon ... Cape Blanco Festival ... Brad, Eric and Dierks. Next year Blake and FGL. Beautiful, rarely seen part of the U.S.A. Bandon, Oregon is out of a time warp and it is just the way they like it. Even saw a phone booth.

With that said ... honestly, raise your hands at home or work: Who really understands all this streaming, digital sales, royalty payments in 2014 ... the buying habits of the new Country audience ... drum roll. Trust me, not even the artists I have spoken to have a handle on everything.

Look at the figures just this week ... FGL now 8x Platinum with "Cruise"... had to think about that for a second -- 8 million? That includes video streams as well as digital sales. Tah Dah ... how can you mix those things up and still call it Platinum? Then how can you compare to what, say, Taylor Swift did even a few years ago? It's like changing the rules in baseball and football, then comparing stats for who goes into the Hall of Fame. It's not right and not fair ... Great accomplishments all, but you can't mix a stream with digital sales or old 45 sales/physical sales? Not that big a deal, but history will read very skewed. RIAA must be doing this at the behest of the labels. It is confusing to say the least.

Songwriters in Nashville and everywhere else are getting more screwed now than ever, but take % of gross of these people and let them roll.

Think of all the great clips in the morgues at Dick Clark and so many more. Change the laws to take the payment not in some 1940 standard but of what the clip user makes. All this makes my head spin.

The money for the artist is on the concert stage. That is simple. You play and get paid X amount. Everyone gets that model. The concert business is risky, but some folks are paying the big stars big money and getting big crowds. You see their happiness at 35,000 feet. The suits smell big booking grosses. You see them booking with greater and greater vigor.

Garth magic keeps everyone in awe. The week the Atlanta shows go on sale ... how many and who is next?

Jason Aldean ... just saw that press release ... he did what?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has recognized Jason Aldean as the Top Male Country Artist in the history of RIAA's Digital Gold & Platinum Awards, the music industry's premier program for celebrating artistic achievement in the marketplace. To date, Aldean has tallied over 21.5 million cumulative RIAA Digital Single Certifications counting song downloads and on-demand streams.

There we go again ... streams ... sales... I just know that's a lot ... look at first sentence again: Top male Country artist in history of RIAA Gold and Platinum awards ... More than Garth? And everyone else ... wow, wow and double wow.

It's almost school restart ... I know I need to make my eyes gloss over with the streaming and digital world ... Now I thought the new folks didn't want to own their music ... just stream and not known.. Does anyone really know what time it is????