10 Million Paid Customers!

Record sales are one thing ... Paid tickets are another. This is where the real money is made these days. Recently, Rascal Flatts celebrated 10 million tickets sold! Garth's current tour is over five million and counting.

The recent tour grosses showed Eric Church #1 for the first half of 2017 with 54.5 million ... To me, that's a wow ... Garth,48 million and counting, was a little more expected. Tim/Faith third with 36.3 million and counting.

On the pop side even bigger bucks ... U2 118 million ... Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers all doing better than their Country counterparts.

This would make plenty envious ... Billy Joel played the new Atlanta baseball stadium ... one night..$4.6 million!

The Eagles with their new sideman Vince Gill has taken another gig: Seattle Safeco Field Sept. 30th ... I hope they keep going!! Never got to see the first-generation Eagles and sure would like to see this edition. Is it me or are their songs actually getting better with time?

Europe touring is a very different animal. Brad Paisley had huge crowds for three outdoor shows in Sweden and Norway. They knew the songs and were quite energetic. Alan Jackson and Toby Keith have played in these parts. The audiences still love Cash and Jones. They want to see keith Urban ... Hope his people know that ... Stockholm Grona Lund Keith.

Apple and Colgate have commercials with Country artists. Kelsea with toothpaste and Brantley with Apple Music. Getting to be a healthy list on the air these days.

The folks who make, edit, photograph commercials are some of the best lighting, all technical services people in the world. Movie quality. Country sells!

With Christmas five months away, the tours of Christmas are starting to appear. Phil Vassar and Kelly Pickler going out in a great pairing. LeAnn Rimes is going out, too.

Spotify getting sued by some Music Row publishers. Not the first time ... Gunpowder and lead ... 24 million streams. Funny how most just said, "Okay, we are now a streaming business."

Carrie Underwood has really been using Instagram ... maybe other social media, too, but very visible there. Some use Twitter a lot ... YouTube seems a little underused. Facebook and Snapchat, hard to tell.

Heading into the final third of Summer ... The huge HOT in many ways, Watershed festival in Washington State ... The other Northwest music festivals getting underway. Summer is racing to an end ... It has been hot ... mostly just HOT!