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The best, the worst, the weirdest

The hits keep coming. .. and so do the misses. USA TODAY's music staff picks the best, the worst and the oddest music,trends and developments of 2007.

10 in a row for Alicia Keys' 'No One'

Alicia Keys' No One registers its 10th week atop the national airplay audience chart - the longest reign at No. 1 in 2007 - while her Like You'll Never See Me Again rises to No. 8 after seven weeks in...

The White/Page interview, plus camping up the rock

Couple of interesting music-related pieces posted on the site tonight -- one is Brian Mansfield's conference call with Jack White of the White Stripes and Patti Page, whose song Conquest is the Stripes' latest single. A meeting of the generations....

Keys' 'No One' ends '07 at No. 1

Holiday songs disappeared from the airwaves, but countdowns and other retrospectives contributed to a static top 10 on the national radio airplay chart. Alicia Keys' No One finished the year with an 11th week at No. 1, according to Nielsen...

The full airplay story

I had just enough radio airplay data on New Year's Day to list the week's top 10 (and thanks to Alison Maxwell for posting that info online), but only now do I have the full range of data I need...

T-Pain's 'Drank' top song of 2007

Here's a quick look at the year-end airplay highlights. More later, I hope. The 2007 national musical pastime was Shawty Snappin’. The practice, known to earlier generations as 'picking up chicks,” was the subtitle and subtext of T-Pain’s Buy U...

My favorite albums of 2007, part 3: The thrilling conclusion (I hope)

Before I concluded the exercise of listing my favorite albums of 2007, I wanted to run through my First Impressions lists for the year, just in case I missed a few. Uh, I missed a few. I'll list them here...

Digital track sales shatter record

While I await the Nielsen SoundScan year-end report, with totals for the year, I wanted to post this week's results. The big news is that a record 42.9 million digital tracks were downloaded during the past week (which included Christmas...

2007: Album sales plunge but track downloads explode

If any doubts lingered that music consumers have shifted their emphasis to digital single-track downloads, 2007's Nielsen SoundScan year-end sales summary should put them to rest. Album sales (including digital sales of entire albums) dropped 15% from 2006, a record...

Year-end sales in even more detail

An expanded version of my earlier post on Nielsen SoundScan's year-end statistical report for the music industry is now up, plus even more details and charts. And I have even greater depths of year-end data on hand, so if you're...