the formula seems to have the highest success rate of known attempts to predict chart toppers. No doubt, that is in no small part due to it taking account of the way the musical-landscape shifts over time.
Can labels actually get better at selling albums as CD sales continue to slide? If the answer is yes, there should be some evidence in digital sales.
Will this be the first Christmas no one gives you a CD? No remastered Pink Floyd box set, no Tom Petty live anthology? It may be an online music service-only yuletide.
Various pundits are still trying to convince us that it is a very useful strategy – despite the fact that it is both counter-intuitive and has been shown to be mostly useless over years of being tried in one form or another.
iTunes had just launched two weeks before, with only some music from the major labels.
Many of us in the music biz were not sure this idea was going to work.