Is Christie the New “Boss” in New Jersey?

Ever since college, I've been known by my friends and family as a Bruce Springsteen enthusiast. In fact, I was in attendance when he performed the first concert in Conseco (now Bankers Life) Fieldhouse. (I actually sat behind Pacers Rik Smits and then-rookie Jeff Foster, who were both kind enough to stay seated throughout the show.) So imagine my surprise when I found this article in The Daily Caller asserting that Gov. Chris Christie is technically more popular than "The Boss" in his home state of New Jersey.

However, do note that the poll was conducted by a conservative organization, so I'm betting there was push-polling involved. Frankly, I'm a little inclined to call "bull-feathers" on this, but it makes for interesting blog fodder. But if this sentiment is accurate and spreads nationally, it could bode well for Christie in 2016.

Chris Christie is apparently more popular in the Garden State than his musical idol Bruce Springsteen.

A Conservative Intel poll of 778 likely voters shows 56 percent of New Jerseyans have a favorable impression of their Republican governor, while just 34 percent have an unfavorable view of him. Ten percent said they were not sure how they feel.

Christie bests Bruce Springsteen, a New Jersey icon, by eight points. “The Boss” registers a 48 percent favorability rating in the poll. In contrast to Christie, however, only 22 percent say they have a distinctly unfavorable impression of the “Born to Run” singer. A whopping 29 percent said they were unsure of how they feel about Springsteen.

The poll was conducted over Oct. 13 – 14 and has a 3.5 percent margin of error.

Christie is an unabashed fanatic of Springsteen’s music, claiming to have attended over 130 Springsteen concerts. Christie even admitted that he wept after Springsteen hugged him last November.

The Conservative Intel survey also shows that Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker is likely to win Wednesday’s special Senate election in New Jersey to replace Frank Lautenberg, who passed away in June. According to the poll, Booker holds an 11-percentage point lead over his Republican challenger, Steve Lonegan, 52 percent to 41 percent.

Popular Band Doing Away With Album Concept, Continuing Evolution of Music Business Paradigm

The band that brought you such ear-pleasing anthems as "Creep" and "Karma Police" announced this week that it plans to stop making albums, and focus on singles. Interesting concept, and it might prove fruitful. Although, I fear my life would have been far less enjoyable had Born to Run been released as a series of unconnected singles. On the upside, we probably never would have been introduced to Chris Gaines if the album concept hadn’t existed — so I guess it’s a push. At any rate, The New York Times has the story:

So, when Mr. Yorke announced a change of course for the band, saying it planned to stop making full-length records and turn its attention to singles, it sounded like an epitaph for the album, the broken backbone of the record industry’s longtime business model.

“None of us wants to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again,” Mr. Yorke told the Believer, a literary magazine based in San Francisco. “Not straight off. I mean, it’s just become a real drag. It worked with ‘In Rainbows’ because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

Radiohead’s shift to singles reflects a change in music fans’ preferences. Instead of buying whole albums, they now stream or download just the songs they want. That, along with unauthorized copying, has decimated industry revenues.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, U.S. sales of albums, in physical and digital form, fell 14 percent last year, continuing a multiyear decline. While consumers bought more than a billion individual digital tracks in the United States, which accounts for a majority of online sales worldwide, they bought only 65 million digital albums in 2008.

Efforts are under way to try to make albums less of a drag. Apple and the major record companies are reportedly working on projects to include liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music videos and other extras with digital downloads.

They could start by examining Radiohead’s experiment with “In Rainbows.” The band’s publisher, Warner Chappell, reported that more than three million copies of the album were distributed in the first year, in digital and physical formats. Some people paid nothing, but the album still made more money than either of the band’s previous two records, Warner Chappell said. And the marketing buzz from the “pay what you want” model helped drive the CD to the top of the charts.