Mariah Carey Passes Elvis in Chart Toppers

The over-40 set is the mainstay of album sales

(NEWSER) - These days, if you want to sell CDs, you're best off targeting the over-40 crowd. In a bizarre twist on music industry logic, older buyers have become a relatively potent force in music sales. The reason: "Adults don’t steal, because we don’t know how to," one older music producer tells the Boston Globe . “We're still married to the concept of ‘put the CD in the car, put the CD in the library.’" More»

Free All Music is innovative, but still might not work

(NEWSER) - A new site thinks it has the answer the music industry’s woes: Free All Music will allow users to download a high-quality mp3 with no copy restrictions in exchange for watching a 15-second video ad of their choosing. The site then takes a user’s handle and uses it to produce another ad, for third-party sites, that announces what the user downloaded and who sponsored it. Users may download 15 mp3s a month—and perhaps more if Free All Music eventually sells more sponsorships. More»

Beatles, meanwhile, maintain dominance with big week

(NEWSER) - Jay-Z and the Beatles lit up the charts this week, Billboard reports. Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 sold 476,000 copies, easily capturing the top spot for the week, and giving the rapper his 11th No. 1 album. That nabs him the record, previously held by Elvis, for the solo act with the most No. 1s ever. The Beatles, meanwhile, sold a whopping 626,000 albums this week, a huge leap from just 21,000 the week before. More»

(NEWSER) - In honor of Woodstock—which happened 40 years ago this weekend—and the “seminal documentary” that captured it, John Farr shares his list of the 10 best rock concert/performance films—all of which are “meant to be played loud,” he writes on the Huffington Post. “So crank it!”

• A Hard Day's Night (1964): “The disarming charisma and spontaneous energy of the Beatles made no traditional plot necessary. It was sufficient to portray a day in the life of the world's most talked about rock band.”

Billboard.com ties MP3 and ticket sales to its famous charts

(NEWSER) - As circulation of its print magazine continues to fall, Billboard is looking to transition to the digital age with an overhauled website designed to be a one-stop shop for pop music, USA Today reports. Billboard.com now allows all visitors, not just subscribers, to look at its 51-year archive of sales charts, and it has integrated those charts with links to artist information, MP3 downloads, and concert tickets. More»