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"When you sing, you have to open yourself up, you have to be raw. And you have to reveal yourself, and sometimes it's very difficult for me to listen to that back, because it might not be as macho as you see yourself." -- Bono, 2002 |
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"When you sing, you have to open yourself up, you have to be raw. And you have to reveal yourself, and sometimes it's very difficult for me to listen to that back, because it might not be as macho as you see yourself." -- Bono, 2002 |
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Column: off the record..., vol. 10-391
@U2,
January 03, 2010
Pretty amazing to think that this column is now in its 10th calendar year. That's the first part of the "vol." number in the title. The second part is the numerical count of columns overall. 391 -- a number that would never have been reached had the staff not agreed to join me in writing it a couple years ago. Thanks, gang. Bono's a big boy and will do what he wants, but I really, really wish he wouldn't bring up the illegal downloading/ISPs-should-pay thing (as he just did in today's New York Times). Edge talked about it in Hot Press last month, and Paul McGuinness has talked about it a lot over the past couple years. I wish they'd all stop talking about it because it's a no-win situation. No matter what they say, it's just too easy for the press and the music-buying public to launch into the rich-rock-stars-feel-underpaid routine. That's about as small-minded an argument as you'll find, but it's how U2 comes across to a lot of people. I'm glad to defend U2 on a lot of things, but this is one area where there's no defense that will change anyone's mind. At this time last year, I shared a fairly lengthy recap of @U2's most popular news articles, lyrics pages, and more. I get a kick out of those year-in-review pieces, and was planning to do one this week that would've looked back on our 2009 stats. I say "would've" because we had a little problem: When we launched the new @U2 last summer, I screwed up the tracking code. Worse, I didn't discover the problem until ... oh, I think it was around December 1st. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So we basically have no idea what the most popular news articles, song lyrics, etc., were in 2009. I think we had a record year for web site traffic, but I also can't confirm that. Our stats show 5.8 million visits and 11.7 million pageviews, but that doesn't include 3-4 months of visits and pageviews in the News, Lyrics, and Calendar sections. (It also doesn't include our blog or our forum.) I can say with some certainty that March 9th -- the day U2 announced the 360 tour -- was our busiest day of the year with 46,000 visits. June 30 -- opening night of the tour in Barcelona -- had 162,000 pageviews, the highest day of the year. In spite of my screwup with the tracking code, @U2 had a marvelous 2009. We launched our new web site on July 31st, and your feedback has been really kind. (Thanks!) We re-launched our blog two weeks later, and that's been a big hit, too. Visits and pageviews on the blog in 2009 were more than double 2008. Our forum continues to grow by about 250 new members per month. We were media sponsors for the first academic conference about U2, and closed out that event by hosting a movie night with U2 3D and special guest Neil McCormick. I think I speak for the whole staff when I say we feel blessed to have had such a great year, and appreciative of your continued support of what we're doing. Thank you. We're hoping 2010 will somehow be even better, but we're only three days in to the new year and I don't have any announcements to share just yet. We did just launch a new Facebook fan page on January 1st, and I'm hopeful that we'll revive the worldwide U2 Fan Survey in February (or maybe March). But other than that, we still need to sort out our plans and goals for the year. This doesn't specifically involve @U2, but I should also mention that some updates and upgrades are in the works for U2tours.com. If you're a regular user of that site and have some ideas for things you'd like to see, drop me a note. You may recall our news bit about Bono busking on Grafton St. in Dublin on Christmas Eve. There's a new and better video of it that's now surfaced on YouTube. And a little birdie tells us that there may be some more video coming soon. One of the gifts under our Christmas tree was the blu-ray version of It Might Get Loud, which was even better on second viewing. The bonus material includes a five-minute video called "Edge's soundcheck" that just shows him alone playing clips from about 4-5 U2 songs. It looks and sounds beautiful, and I could probably watch it forever. Speaking of IMGL, some of the folks in our forum are planning a viewing party on Saturday, January 16th at 8 pm ET. Basically everyone hits PLAY on the movie at the same time and then uses the forum to chat in real-time while the movie plays. Everyone is welcome, so join the forum (or login) and take part if that sounds fun. I'm kinda curious about U2's plans for the Grammy Awards. They're not nominated for a major award, so it's not a given that they'll be invited to perform. And since the nominations are for minor awards, they may not even want to attend. On the other hand, there's a big party the night before the Grammys for Doug Morris, the CEO of Universal Music. Bono, at least, seems to be a natural fit for attending that -- they have a bit of history together. Maybe the whole band shows up for that, and does the Grammys, too? And finally ... what's changed this decade.
See you next time! (c) @U2, 2010.
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