Tuesday, February 7, 2012

#TwitterXmasSingle Sums

Well the sums are in for some of the sales of Winter Song, the first ever #twitterxmassingle. We launched the song online on Sunday 4th December 2011 and they full report was made available to me on Monday of this week [5 February 2012]. We used Tunecore to distribute our song online and as you know we were not able to get a licence in time to produce cds for the Christmas market.

The sums and totals we have are for sales on iTunes and they are listed for iTunes in different countries – see list below.

In terms of what we have in figures to date please note the following:

We sold 2,379 downloads of the single to date. The bulk of the sales are from iTunes and the countries these are from are listed below. There were some sales on other platforms which are included too and there may still be other sales to be accounted for and which will be notified to us in the next report.

After iTunes commission the balance in our account is currently 2119.99 US dollars and after this is changed into euros we will have a total of approximately 1,600 euros.  Please note that this figure might change slightly depending on exchange rates on the day the money is transferred from us to Holles Street.

We received a donation of €200 on the day of the recording and the Army Number 1 band sang for us on College Green during Christmas week and raised around 1,000 euro [to be confirmed].

Overall it’s a job well done. It was also a huge amount of fun, all for a very serious cause – the babies in Unit 8 in Holles Street. The bulk of the sales were made in the week after we launched the song and if we had had the CDs then we would have had a very good chance at the Christmas number 1 but we did not have time to get the licence processed. 

 I am told that our total sales are very good for just making it available as a download so we should all be very proud. If we had more time in the run up to Christmas who knows what we could have achieved.
The very interesting thing to note is that we are still selling copies of the song on iTunes here and there so do keep plugging it on Facebook and Twitter and we will keep passing on the money.

All that remains is for me to say a huge thank you to everyone who was involved – all the singers and supporters and to everyone who tweeted for us. Special thanks goes to Ian Callanan [@icallanan] for sharing his musical genius with us and to the Westin Hotel in Dublin for hosting us, not once, but twice during the project.

I have been very humbled by all that has happened and by the generosity of people with their time and their talents so thanks again.

We were never going to raise millions but the awareness we have raised is priceless to Unit 8 in Holles Street and hopefully what we have done has given them a head start for a new fundraising drive for all they want to do to make Unit 8 and the hospital the best there is! A special thanks to the staff, parents and residents of Unit 8 for welcoming the madness that was #twitterxmassingle with open arms.

Which of us could have known this time last year that before the end of the year we would have a top ten single and a number one on iTunes? Certainly not me! So  all that remains is for me to ask – are you up for #twitterxmassingle2?

Postscript Summer 2012:
We just call a call to say we raised just over one thousand euro from radio air play of Winter Song, the twitterxmassingle and the cheque has gone directly to Holles Street. 

Brenda
xxxxx

Downloads on iTunes listed as per the Tunecore report:

·         USA                                                       225 downloads
·         Australia/New Zealand                           10 downloads
·         Canada                                                 17 downloads
·         Denmark                                               1 download
·         Italy                                                      1 download
·         CH                                                       2 downloads
·         Belgium                                                1 download
·         France                                                  1 download
·         Estonia                                                 1 download
·         Ireland                                                  140 downloads
·         Norway                                                1 download
·         Ireland                                                  1894 downloads
·         Netherlands                                          4 downloads
·         Denmark                                              7 downloads
·         Great Britain                                         73 downloads
·         Japan                                                    1 downloads

Background to #TwitterXmasSingle:

·
         TwitterXmasSingle came about following a tweet by @BrendaDrumm on 19 November 2011The song Winter Song was chosen on Twitter and the charity to benefit was Unit 8 Neonatal Unit in Holles Street in Dublin
·         We had 140+ characters involved in the recording  of the song
·         Winter Song was recorded in the Westin Hotel in Dublin on 27 November 2011
·         The song and video were launched on Sunday 4 December
·         Winter Song/#twitterxmassingle went to number 1 on iTunes on Sunday 4 December and stayed there for several days beating Rhianna and others
·         The bookies had us tipped to be number 1 for Christmas
·         When the official IRMA charts came out the week after the launch we entered the charts as a new entry at number 8 – we made it to the top ten.
·         We made a short documentary about the making of the #twitterxmassingle which has had over 1,200 views on YouTube
·         The official video has had over 3,000 views on YouTube
·         The writers of the song Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson loved what we did and tweeted @brendadrumm and @icallanan about the song.
·         Media outlets which covered the story: TV3 News, Xpose, Ireland AM and Morning Show. RTE: John Murray Show, Morning Ireland, RTE TV 9pm News and 2FM. Today FM, Newstalk News and the Global Village. Spirit Radio. East Coast FM. KFM. Dublin City FM. Irish Independent. Daily Mail. RSVP. Woman’s Way. Anglo Celt. Kildare Post, Leinster Leader and Kildare Nationalist. Classic Hits 4FM. BBC Radio Ulster. U105 Radio. Entertainment.ie and so many blogs about it we lost count. Also Hot Press Magazine. Radio Snowflake.
    Ends