The Wisdom of the Illiterati


	top ten update Up until a few months ago, there was along established phenomenom on the singles charts known as the "album bump". Singles by established artists, unsupported by a current album, would enter the charts, gain some radio airplay and some sales, settle into the mid-30s for a week or two, and then, when the album was released, suddenly leap into the top ten (Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is a good example of this). It was as if a large part of the audience wasn't aware that the single could be purchased until the album came out. Singles that were already in, say, the top fifteen, would almost always jump to number one, and stay there as long as album sales and airplay were strong. In the last few months, however, the album bump seems to have disappeared, at least for established artists. Mariah Carey, Usher, and Lil Wayne have all had number one singles this year, and all three had albums debut at number one, as well. But here's the odd thing: the week each album was released, the lead single either stayed stagnant, or actually dropped on the chart, and all these singles achieved their number one status before the album appeared. Lil Wayne sold over a million copies of Tha Carter III last week, the biggest week for any album since 2005, but this week, the lead single, "Lollipop", which has been number one for a month, inexplicably dropped to number three. Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" also dropped the week of her album's release, while Usher's "Love in This Club" stood motionless the week his album came out, and slowly dropped in the weeks that followed. As Antony Bruno points out in Billboard, it's been accepted wisdom at the major labels for a long time that pre-release singles hurt album sales (that was why Epic foolishly held back on releasing Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls"; it would have been number one for a full two months--instead of a paltry one week--if they'd released it before the album). Now it appears the exact opposite is the case. Once the album is out, the audience picks up the LP instead of the single, which, unless massive airplay holds it up, quickly drops down the chart. The artist, and the song, are no less popular, but the audience is going with the bargain bulk package instead of the higher priced individual unit. This undercuts yet another piece of the record industry's accepted wisdom: that you could make the audience buy the same song dozens of times if you packaged it attractively enough. Now there is no package, and that trick is a lot harder, if not impossible to pull off. This, in turn, makes it difficult to peddle follow-up singles in any market other than radio. Mariah Carey's latest single, "Bye-Bye", which debuted the same week as the album, has barely made top 25 and shows no sign of going further, even though it's gotten plenty of airplay. In order to keep album sales up, artists are going to need to release more LPs, with fewer singles pulled from each one, a marketing scheme that takes us back to the mid-sixties, at least (this has been Def Jam's strategy for Rihanna, who's released three albums, and scored 9 top ten singles, in less than three years). The problem is that, ultimately, that isn't going to work either. Those 60s albums never sold very well, and besides, as long as iTunes refuses to sell albums as discrete, all-or-nothing units, no one would buy them (though they might pick up enough of the better cuts to get them onto the lower reaches of the charts). People might not even bother with that mightiest of all cash cows, the greatest hits set. All of this, of course, is probably moot as long as filesharing exists (and predictions are that as time goes by, the filesharing situation is only going to get worse for the record companies). Although Lil Wayne has demonstrated that you can sell a million official releases by giving away a ton of unofficial ones first, that isn't an example that will work for everyone (just like the Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay models may only work with their particular audience). And when the audience essentially stops paying for music at all, it will hardly matter what sort of marketing scheme the labels come up with. The first person to invent a marketing plan that makes the record companies money and that works with more than one artist or genre will be hailed as a savior, but I'm willing to bet no such person exists. The record industry will eventually, I'm afraid, become the equivalent of online busking--"If you like our music, please buy a t-shirt or drop a few dimes in our Paypal account. Thank you." \| [Archives] Search entries:		top ten 1966 top ten OTHER OCCASIONAL RAMBLINGS Hail Blogoslavia! ~~100~~ 45 or so things about JSM The Saga of the Lone Biscuit OTHER BLOGS Blogroll Me

top ten update

Up until a few months ago, there was along established phenomenom on the singles charts known as the "album bump". Singles by established artists, unsupported by a current album, would enter the charts, gain some radio airplay and some sales, settle into the mid-30s for a week or two, and then, when the album was released, suddenly leap into the top ten (Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is a good example of this). It was as if a large part of the audience wasn't aware that the single could be purchased until the album came out. Singles that were already in, say, the top fifteen, would almost always jump to number one, and stay there as long as album sales and airplay were strong.

In the last few months, however, the album bump seems to have disappeared, at least for established artists. Mariah Carey, Usher, and Lil Wayne have all had number one singles this year, and all three had albums debut at number one, as well. But here's the odd thing: the week each album was released, the lead single either stayed stagnant, or actually dropped on the chart, and all these singles achieved their number one status before the album appeared. Lil Wayne sold over a million copies of Tha Carter III last week, the biggest week for any album since 2005, but this week, the lead single, "Lollipop", which has been number one for a month, inexplicably dropped to number three. Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" also dropped the week of her album's release, while Usher's "Love in This Club" stood motionless the week his album came out, and slowly dropped in the weeks that followed.

As Antony Bruno points out in Billboard, it's been accepted wisdom at the major labels for a long time that pre-release singles hurt album sales (that was why Epic foolishly held back on releasing Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls"; it would have been number one for a full two months--instead of a paltry one week--if they'd released it before the album). Now it appears the exact opposite is the case. Once the album is out, the audience picks up the LP instead of the single, which, unless massive airplay holds it up, quickly drops down the chart. The artist, and the song, are no less popular, but the audience is going with the bargain bulk package instead of the higher priced individual unit.

This undercuts yet another piece of the record industry's accepted wisdom: that you could make the audience buy the same song dozens of times if you packaged it attractively enough. Now there is no package, and that trick is a lot harder, if not impossible to pull off. This, in turn, makes it difficult to peddle follow-up singles in any market other than radio. Mariah Carey's latest single, "Bye-Bye", which debuted the same week as the album, has barely made top 25 and shows no sign of going further, even though it's gotten plenty of airplay. In order to keep album sales up, artists are going to need to release more LPs, with fewer singles pulled from each one, a marketing scheme that takes us back to the mid-sixties, at least (this has been Def Jam's strategy for Rihanna, who's released three albums, and scored 9 top ten singles, in less than three years). The problem is that, ultimately, that isn't going to work either. Those 60s albums never sold very well, and besides, as long as iTunes refuses to sell albums as discrete, all-or-nothing units, no one would buy them (though they might pick up enough of the better cuts to get them onto the lower reaches of the charts). People might not even bother with that mightiest of all cash cows, the greatest hits set.

All of this, of course, is probably moot as long as filesharing exists (and predictions are that as time goes by, the filesharing situation is only going to get worse for the record companies). Although Lil Wayne has demonstrated that you can sell a million official releases by giving away a ton of unofficial ones first, that isn't an example that will work for everyone (just like the Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay models may only work with their particular audience). And when the audience essentially stops paying for music at all, it will hardly matter what sort of marketing scheme the labels come up with. The first person to invent a marketing plan that makes the record companies money and that works with more than one artist or genre will be hailed as a savior, but I'm willing to bet no such person exists. The record industry will eventually, I'm afraid, become the equivalent of online busking--"If you like our music, please buy a t-shirt or drop a few dimes in our Paypal account. Thank you."