6.9.11 Adam News & Info

In this to honor Eber...

Man, RCAEd is chatty today!!


RCA Ed: Thursday, June 9, 2011 - 13:26

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Social media numbers very definitely DO NOT equate with sales. This was true during MySpace's heyday and is true now, during Facebook's. Besides Gaga, you can look at Avril Lavigne and any number of artists boasting upwards of 20MM+ Facebook fans, whose sales amount to maybe 10% of that. Bottom line is that it takes much less effort to 'like' an artist than it does to download a track, never mind find a store that still carries CDs. Facebook's best chance of actually impacting sales will be to incorporate Spotify into their platform, so that you may be influenced to buy this song or that based on your friends listening habits. Stay tuned.

Used to be an album WOULD lose sales counting towards Soundscan if a certain retailer or anther discounted its price below a specified recommended minimum. Even last week, we were wondering whether Amazon's Gaga discount (an aggressive play to garner mass subscribers for their cloud music service) might fall into this category and void their part in Gaga's 1st week sales. But it seems that this was not the case, partly due to changing times and Soundscan rules, and partly to parallel legal issues relating to these recommended minimums equating with price fixing. Or something...don't quote me. In any case, they counted, but don't expect Amazon to play this hand again too often, if ever. Isolated, one-day sales will no doubt continue.

Lady Gaga's case is unique in many ways - primarily because everything is relatively unique during such fast-changing times, and also because hers was an EVENT album the likes of which we rarely see in today's music business. By that I mean that it was a social event, where people wanted to own it without having to hear all the music first, because her star is bright enough right now that "being there" was a big part of the consumer experience. This means her sales and the amount of partners willing to discount or support it in exchange for a "piece (real or perceived) of that EVENT are both exciting and possibly misleading. Everyone was there that week, but now what? What's the lasting impact, if any? Hence the 2nd week sales drop of 84%, and the possibility that, now that the EVENT has transpired, sales will crater unless she can deliver a true smash single or two.

Compare Gaga's example to that to an Adele, whose album has been selling large quantities steadily for months, based on the music itself (one single mega-smash) more so than hype, and you pretty much have the polar examples of musical success today. What's better? Heck, the best answer is that, both models are just fine, so long as they work! But their differences do bring up many questions about the potentially ephemeral nature of Gaga madness vs. the long-term career prospects for steady-as-she-goes Adele. Then again, both could crash and burn tomorrow due to the smallest public snafu, or in the long term as consumer perceptions and music market trends shift. Those shifts are happening on a faster scale every day, thanks to the web's communication strengths, so it'll be interesting to note how those forces affect our marketing decisions for Adam's next album, just 6 months from now.

There's no firm RCA DATE in that comment, by the way, just a ballpark I would personally like to see happen. [/ul]

Nope, RCA is doing this for the avid fan groups. David Cook's is coming out in vinyl also, and a nice deluxe package (hee, hee) that also includes a behind the scenes DVD!!
The best thing about this news is that they are getting close enough to production that they are actually discussing this stuff!!

ETA: 6 months!!! WTF you talking about, Ed?!