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Billboard has released the sales figures from the first week of the Beatles in the iTunes store: more than 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs have been sold via iTunes worldwide.

The Beatles were one of the best-known holdouts whose music was not available on iTunes, and while the response from consumers may or may not be what it takes to convince AC/DC (and a few others) to make their music available, the sales figures were still eagerly watched. By comparison, sales of the Beatles' music far exceeded those of Led Zeppelin when its catalog came to iTunes in 2007. Led Zeppelin sold about 300,000 individual tracks in its first week in the iTunes store.

We Are Hunted is just one of a number of web upstarts hoping to displace Billboard as the chart of record for music. What makes We Are Hunted slightly different is that it not only produces the requisite daily and weekly music charts, it releases a set of research reports every 6 months. It recently published over 100 reports on popular music artists, covering the 6-month period January to June 2010. The research is based on analysis of 531,901 music articles and 13,439,734 music-related tweets.

The reports are most helpful in showing the impact of Twitter and online press coverage on musicians. One of the most popular artists of 2010 has been Lady Gaga, so let's see what her We Are Hunted report shows.

Billboard is best known for charts that rank the most popular music and musicians, which the weekly industry magazine started publishing in 1913 as a list of the most popular sheet music. Since then, topping the Billboard Hot 100 has become a coveted milestone for musicians, but the Billboard brand has lost some of its critical cache in recent decades, just as record companies saw their influence decline with the rise of the Internet.

But it's clear Billboard knows it will lose relevance fast unless it can establish itself as an authority on music and the digital frontier.

Ultimate Chart is a new type of music chart for the Internet age. It doesn't just measure music sales and radio play, as Billboard has traditionally done, but popularity over a variety of online services - YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, MySpace, MTV.com, and many more. But does Ultimate Chart live up to the hype its received since launching in July? A scan of the top 10 of each chart shows that 8 songs feature on both Ultimate Chart and Billboard. The number 1 on each differs only slightly. On Ultimate Chart the #1 is "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz, displacing Eminem's "Love The Way You Lie" (still #1 on Billboard).

Either Billboard is keeping up with the times more than Ultimate Chart likes to admit, or Ultimate Chart isn't actually changing much in the music industry after all. Which is it?

Startups flourish when entrepreneurs find new ways to disrupt existing markets and industries. One of the oldest businesses that has been in dire need of innovation is the music industry, and startups have begun to crowd the industry, rethinking the way people share, buy and experience music. Billboard Magazine recently named Rdio, a brand new subscription streaming service with storied founders, the top music startup of 2010 - and how it got there may sound familiar.

What is Magma? Well, it's best known as molten underground rock waiting to explode out of a volcano and flow viscously through your run-of-the-mill Polynesian village. But as of today, Magma is also a video site created by Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron. Baron launched the site in the hopes that it fills a need for audience-focused content. Just as TV Guide and the Billboard charts offer entry points into their industries, Magma offers an entry point into web video. The company hopes to become the new search interface for video exploration.

Musicians and their fans are meant to be hip, sometimes tragically so.
RWW recently reviewed 18 streaming music services and our readers still had at least a dozen more suggestions. New and innovative music sites are springing up like daisies this summer, so at first glance when Billboard magazine announces the launch of their new online community, smaller independent sites should be shaking in their boots. Powered by streaming music from Lala.com, a Ticketmaster concert sales engine and All Music Guide's artist info, Billboard aims to offset waning sales and encourage a new generation of fans.

If you've ever wondered what the headlines at the top of your Gmail inbox are, they're called "web clips", not ads. Gmail has a preselected amount of news headlines from various sites across the web that you can customize to have displayed across the top of your inbox as you check your mail. Now you're no longer stuck with the default selections and can add your own selections.