Random music new for Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Let’s face it: if eggnog were really any good, we’d drink it year-round. Just sayin’. Now some music news for the first day of 2019.

1. Weekly Canadian music sales and streaming: The final report for 2018 looks like this: Total albums, -23.1% lower than 2017; digital albums, -19.9%; physical albums, -24.9%; CDs, -28.5%; vinyl LPs, +21.4%; audio streams, +44.3% (1.327 billion streams last week.)
2. And if you’re rooting for the return of the cassette, sales are up 14.5% from 2017. But before you get too excited, that works out to a total 12-month cross-Canada sales number of 8,700. And no, that’s not a typo. Compare that to 975,2000 vinyl LPs and 5,081,000 CDs.
3. Ray Sawyer, the eye patch guy from Dr. Hook, has died at the age of 81. (The eye patch was real, by the way, the result of an auto accident.)
4. Jimmy Osmond, the youngest of the Osmond brothers, has suffered a stroke.
5. Madonna gave a surprise New Year’s Eve performance in New York.
6. Here are a few predictions for music and the media for 2019.
7. Pearl Jame’s Jeff Ament has released his Top 10 of 2018.
8. A brief history of the term “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.”
9. So much for Pete Tong’s New Year’s Eve balloon drop in the Philippines.
10. The head of a Saudi TV network was fired for allowing the broadcast of a music concert.
11. The Great Streaming Wars of 2019 is about to begin.
12. Now you can eat just like Johnny Cash thanks to this new cookbook.
13. Snoop Dogg wants to adopt an abandoned dog named Snoop Dogg.
14. How did the boy next door (cf. Ed Sheeran and George Ezra) conquer pop music?
15. Bohemian Rhapsody has been nominated for a couple of film awards.
16. Because he got high. (Via Tom)
17. Kids: They just don’t go clubbing like we used to. Why?
18. No. Just no.