A look at the top 10 albums in America reveals sales
are down. Way down. The past year has been a rough one for record
labels in America, as albums are not selling well in the states. The
top 10 for the past month (even year) show albums barely reaching
gold during their shelf life, as the current projects by each artist
are selling on average 200,000-300,000 copies.
Considering how expensive albums are to record, with
some producers charging between $50,000 to $250,000 per song (or
beat) in addition to music videos, buying airplay, marketing and
advertising costs reaching into the millions, labels are
hemorrhaging money on projects with low financial yield.
Singles are selling okay, but when you think about
the fact artists get a few cents for each one sold, then 20-30 cents
per unit goes to retailers and the rest the label and associates,
that’s not much money. A time is coming when there will be mergers
of well known labels to try to stay in business in the face of what
has happened.
