Inside the Music Industry

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by Torrere
By your observations, who is most responsible for an album's success?

I don't think I can narrow it down to one person. It takes a perfect storm. Most albums lose a fistful of money – good albums, with good songs and a strong artist. For a record to make back the money invested in it takes

1 slamdunk radio song
An artist with a personality interesting enough to work on the promo circuit
An A&R person who has enough clout within his own label to secure a marketing budget
A radio promoter who’s timing is perfect (#1 song the week before the album hits the store is the goal)
A video that’s got enough eye-candy to play on MTV every 40 minutes
A video promoter with enough push to get it on MTV's very, very short playlist

And all of that is just to get enough records sold to cover the initial cost of the album. You have to do it all over again with a second song if you want the thing to be profitable.

Nelly Furtado’s first record for a textbook example of all of this. “Like A Bird” was timed perfectly, sent the album sales to platinum, the second song, “Turn Out The Lights” started putting it in the black.

-sm