Many Happy Returns
Notice a marked increase in the number of "reunion" acts and new albums by groups you thought had disappeared into the mists of time? So has Forbes.com, whose Tuesday piece titled "Old Stars, New Music, New Money" discusses major labels betting that acts like Peter Frampton, Styx, KRS-One, Chaka Khan, and Donna Summer will sell albums to people who, well, still buy albums:
Moreover, most of their fans are older consumers who are less likely to be satisfied with a single-song download from Apple's... iTunes Store, says John Kellogg, an entertainment attorney who teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. "These older artists' fans are CD or album-buying fans and that's one reason why record companies like them,'' Kellogg says.
They aren't selling in the several hundred thousands as in their glory days, however. Peter Frampton's recent Fingerprints has sold 52,000 copies, while America's Here & Now sold 46,000 copies in the US. These numbers explain why you often find these acts touring a lot more than they might have before.
Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin's members are making noises about touring in 2008 with Jason Bonham, son of deceased drummer John Bonham, after performing at a memorial concert for the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Could a record deal with Starbucks' Hear Music be far behind?... Neil Young, on the other hand, is apparently in no hurry to release the first volume of his decades-in-preparation Archives box set, which has been moved to 2008 from its 2007 release date, the latest in a string of dashed hopes for fans going all the way back to 2000.