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OCTOBER 9, 2008

What Do You Get For Two Million MySpace Friends and 26 Million Streams?

Atlantic rapper T.I. has passed two million MySpace friends, his MySpace page has over 82.6 million views and his hit single "Whatever You Like" has over 27 million streams at MySpace. Right now all of the songs at his MySpace page are collectively getting well over one million streams per day and to date have streamed over 138 million times.

How does all that translate into cash?

First-week sales of the album Paper Trail were 568,000. The album will have a big second-week drop but should top one million units within a few weeks. First week sales of the song "Whatever You Like" totaled almost 335,000 units. That's 0.13 song purchases per MySpace stream, or $0.09 of download revenue per song stream. (I'm comparing U.S. sales to global MySpace statistics. Comparing numbers across territories like that isn't the best way to compare artist statistics, but it's the only way I can do it.)

Having a #1 song will influence traffic at an artist's MySpace page. At a penny per stream, T.I.'s MySpace page can bring in $15,000 per day if visitors listen to 1.5 million streams (which T.I. will easily exceed today). Those streams would generate even more revenue if the songs had an Amazon.com buy button (which they do not yet have). That's $105,000 in ad revenue for one week. Album sales, assuming a 15/85 digital/physical split, brought in (roughly) $5.42 million. First-week sales of "Whatever You Like" brought in $235,000 (I don't know a la carte sales from other tracks on the album, so I am ignoring them as well as ringtones). The total of the three is $5.76 million. That's $3.75 per MySpace friend (again, not including ringtones).

Robin Thicke released an album last week as well. Something Else sold 137,000 units. His MySpace page has 8.52 million visits to date and he has 279,000 friends. Even though Thicke's MySpace page has streamed 17 million songs, he doesn't currently have a #1 single as does T.I. Thicke's MySpace page has streamed his latest single only 130,000 times. The page is getting about 30,000 streams per day. That's only $300 per day at a penny per stream and $2,100 per week. Just to get in revenue from a single, let's say Thicke sold 50,000 units last week. That's $35,000 in revenue. With a 15/85 split on the album, that's revenue of $1.31 million. The total for the three is about $1.35 million. That's $4.82 per MySpace friend.

Let's compare to another debut last week, The Glass Passenger by emo band Jack's Mannequin. The album debuted with sales of 49,000 units. Relative to the band's number of MySpace friends, that's the same as T.I. but worse than Thicke. If friends of Jack's Mannequin had purchased the album at the same rate Robin Thicke friends bought his record, they would have sold about 104,000 units. The band's MySpace page had streamed over 14 million songs to date and is currently doing less than 100,000 streams per day. That's $1,000 per day at a penny per stream. With a 20/80 split on the album (a bit higher because it's rock) that's first-week revenue of about $467,600 without taking into account a la carte track purchases and ringtones. That's only $2.21 per MySpace friend.

• T.I.: 0.263 albums per MySpace friend, 0.026 MySpace friends/profile views
• Thicke: 0.491 albums per MySpace friend, 0.0327 MySpace friends/profile views
• Jack's Mannequin: 0.23 albums per MySpace friend

Peep the original article from Coolfer Here