Will music label make profit from a non-successful album?

[Chula]

In case of an album with sales of less than one million, like D'elles or Barbra's Love is the Answer, or Gloria's latest album, the sales are rather low and music label even did not promote them at all.

 

I wonder how these albums could make profit? Does it make sense to spend 7-8 months in the studio doing an album but it sells merely 400,000 or less worldwide!!!

[Mrs.Goldman]

I suppose the labels make profit also from radio plays of the songs and also from the concerts of the performers (from ticket sales or even from the songs that are playes, just like on the radio, even though that's not much)

[Chula]

For Barbra and Gloria's latest albums, I don't think radio played their songs

[Timster]

In case of an album with sales of less than one million, like D'elles or Barbra's Love is the Answer, or Gloria's latest album, the sales are rather low and music label even did not promote them at all.

 

Don't forget, despite having low long-term sales, Barbra's Love Is The Answer went striaght to number 1 in both the US and UK, that must count for something!

[Ray]

I guess they do make money. Otherwise the labels would have stopped releasing albums by artists who don't score big hits anymore.

They still sell a lot more than most other artists.

[Chula]

That's what I wanna know 'how' they make money

[GoldenLeaf]

Don't forget, despite having low long-term sales, Barbra's Love Is The Answer went striaght to number 1 in both the US and UK, that must count for something!

Count for what? I don't think music labels make more money when an album debut at #1 instead of #2 or #3. It has nothing to do with how much copies an album is going to sell in the following weeks/months.

 

Take Celine's Taking Chances for example. This album might have debuted at #3 in the US and #5 in the UK but it outsold Barbra's Love Is The Answer in terms of sales. Basically Sony made more money with Taking Chances than with Love Is The Answer.

Edited May 17, 2012 at 10:42 PM by Calypso

[duri]

I´m sure label make profit also from albums which sales are not so big, what about local singers whose are not famous worldwide their sales could be 50000 or less depends from country, of course question also is how much label pay to singer for album, if we knew it we could compare, and BTW D ´elles was not released worldwide, it was released in Europe and Canada as I know.

[tiniann88]

In Country Weekly, there is a "ask Kix Brooks" section and a fan asked a question similar to this one. I can't remember which issue it is in and I've got too many Country Weeklys to go through them all and find it. Anywohs, I think this is how the music business runs.

Record labels pay for the recording studio and all the studio musicians, producers,photo sessions, artwork design ect. If the album doesn't sell, the label looses money and the singer/band has to pay the label.

Singers/bands make most of their money from ticket sales and merchandise sales.

Songwriters make money from radio play (singers and labels don't make money from radio)

The charts just look at how well albums and singles do in a week. They don't really pay attention to how well an album sells overall.

 

I hope this helps and if I happen to find that Country Weekly, I'll post a more clear explanation.