Thinking about yesterday's post, it occurs to me I can only speculate on which music is truly "semi-popular" and which music qualifies as "long-tail" obscure. Surely, "The OC" soundtracks are popular but does Mission of Burma's CD sell more than John Adams'? Using Amazon sales rank as a proxy, let's find out:
music sales rank 1-10:
11-100: Amadou & Mariam
101-1000: Music from the OC: Mix 1
1001-10000: Music from the OC: Mix 2 Slint
10001-100000: Kronos Quartet Frank Zappa Mission of Burma John Adams Charles Ives/Bernstein Eric Dolphy Alan Hovhaness/Shanghai Quartet
100001-1000000: The Anomoanon/Black Sabbath Henry Cowell/Anthony de Mare Robert Moran
Ok, so Mission of Burma only slightly outsells John Adams...
Well, the phrase "popular music" is not always literal...it refers to genres that are popular/commercial more than to specific artists, albums, or songs. In other words, to some extent isn't popular music just a catch-all euphemism for "non-classical music?"
Posted by: Michael J. West | August 26, 2005 at 06:40 AM