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What should be done to boost ALBUM sales.
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Album sales are at an all time low with 5,000,000 seen as an overwhelming success. But what honestly could be done to stop this.
#1 - I think Singers/bands should take time to sing album tracks on high profile performances. No one wants to see the same song performed over and over again.
#2 - I personally think that having none of the 'album tracks' available to be bought interdependently on iTunes will benefit hugely. Each single having a proper release date with a B-side.
#3 - I think also airplay singles should be released before an album, have it released but it's a free download if you Pre-order the entire album.
#4 - I think a show like Tops of The Pops would hugely benefit. Make it more UK based with lesser known acts performing as well as #1 artists. A slot for an unsigned act should also be given a slot at the end.
#5 - Stop collaborations. I've noticed many times that singles (lead singles in particular) which are collaborations tend to result in poor album sales even for this day and age.
#6 - I also think HMV should have (will never happen) but an album of the week which should be a relatively new album which is in need for extra promotion. Label it at £4.99 and have it return to original price the next week.
Any other suggestions.
#1 - I think Singers/bands should take time to sing album tracks on high profile performances. No one wants to see the same song performed over and over again.
#2 - I personally think that having none of the 'album tracks' available to be bought interdependently on iTunes will benefit hugely. Each single having a proper release date with a B-side.
#3 - I think also airplay singles should be released before an album, have it released but it's a free download if you Pre-order the entire album.
#4 - I think a show like Tops of The Pops would hugely benefit. Make it more UK based with lesser known acts performing as well as #1 artists. A slot for an unsigned act should also be given a slot at the end.
#5 - Stop collaborations. I've noticed many times that singles (lead singles in particular) which are collaborations tend to result in poor album sales even for this day and age.
#6 - I also think HMV should have (will never happen) but an album of the week which should be a relatively new album which is in need for extra promotion. Label it at £4.99 and have it return to original price the next week.
Any other suggestions.
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People don't wanna waste ALOT of money on one album for an artist who in reality is not in the slightest bit grateful for your purchase.
No wonder piracy is so high and i don't blame them.
Perhaps throw in some merchandise with an album... "Bye Rihannas brand new album get the official 2013 calander free"
I agree about TOTP also there is no chart music show to watch around which would get people interested in music and help sales.
Was the show really doing that badly? I remember in the 90's it was quite big and with pop bands coming back surely the teen audience would be there for it?
Noone would spend their money on an album with 3 great tracks and 10 fillers. If the album is not amazing from beginning to end, people will only buy the few good tracks seperately and fairly so. It's all up to the artists.
The only thing the industry can do is find a way to affectively put an end to payola. No label should be allowed to pay radios to play the songs of a specific artist, because that leads to lack of diversity. There are basically 20-30 popular artists who usually fail to sell well because their songs are not even that good and all the other artists remain ignored and low profile, so even if they're capable of making a quality album, nobody checks them out.
The immediate issue is price. Charging the same (often more) for digital albums and physical is ludicrous. You shouldn't be paying for any physical production/storage/retail costs for a digital file.
Preventing cherry-picking would be a good move too, so people could buy the single(s) for XXp or buy the whole album for £X. Make it good value.
However in the long term, with the popularity of YouTube, LastFM and Spotify, I think it's inevitable that streaming is the future. We'll all just tap into a cloud music library from our devices, possibly with a monthly charge for unlimited access, which will render traditional music purchase redundant.
These suggestions are largely about going back to the past, to the way things were. Is that realistic? Once music is delivered by digital download you will get audience fragmentation and the harvesting of favourite tracks from present and past catalogues. It's going to be hard to change that behaviour.
Downloads also make the album effectively a meaningless format. Albums are nothing more than collections of 10 or 12 songs which is a bit random in the age of unlimited downloads but probably still exist because CDs are still available.
Also you can't really stop artists from collaborating. If it wasn't for some collaborations, I don't think people would even know who some artists were. Emeli Sande became well known after her song with Professor Green.
To boost album sales it's simple, reduce the price (especially for digital albums) and stop trying to rinse the public with re-releases.
^^ I think it's partly this because some albums have been selling well. In general, and I know there's exceptions, but I think people are paying more attention to reviews and word of mouth these days when it comes to albums. Also, if an artist has released a half-arsed album in the past, I think it can sometimes hurt their future sales.
I have only bought a handful of albums this year - Rebecca Ferguson, Lana Del Ray and Nicola Roberts. How sad's that?
Yet I've bought tons of singles.
In terms of a chart TV show, it's not happening. Simon Fuller tried to make a show around the NOW! brand. Simon Cowell wanted to do something for ITV. Universal Music pitched ideas to BBC1 and ITV1. There have been repeated calls for TOTP to return. But none of this has been successful and ultimately it is out of the hands of the music industry. TV commissioners will decide if they want a chart TV show and at the moment they don't.
Limiting availibility to songs just encourages piracy.
In terms of pricing, they can only do so much. If they halve the price of an album then the album market would need to more than double in size to make up for it. The cost of an album has fallen (especially in real terms) and yet sales have fallen further. You can only do so much to compete and will never win a "price war" with pirates giving it away for free. And albums hardly seem that expensive for a 50 minute album which can be used again and again for years to come.
We'll see price promotions for albums that have already sold a healthy amount (such as the current £3.99 iTunes promotion). I think we'll see more price points and potentially merchandise tie-ins with physical sales so as labels can create premium price points that dedicated fans will pay. Almost buying a "package" rather than just an album.
It's already becoming about "track equivalent albums". Hits are more valuable than ever. Acts from Rihanna to Labrinth are making as much from singles sales as album sales. Brands are more important - endorsements, VEVO presence, touring, merchandise, DVD's, maybe even films. This is the way the industry is moving at the moment - rather than trying to cling on to the album.
The album will live - but it might just be for markets that actually buy their music. Mums that buy Buble and Adele. Teens that buy One Direction. To use a sweeping generalisation, if 20 something males download their music illegally, labels won't release albums for that market.
One obvious thing I can think of is that if you've bought 2 singles from an album before release, you could be offered a healthy discount on the whole album. But maybe that already happens?
I'm doing a course in music atm, and it seems to be largely believed by a lot of the music industry that album sales are going to continue to go in decline until the point where they're almost irrelevent.
I can kind of understand, because the way people consume music today makes the whole concept of an album less marketable than it used to be.
I also think reducing the price would help a lot. Yes, I know they're already much cheaper than they were before, but the reason single sales are at their highest ever levels right now is because they're so cheap and so easily accessible (you hear a catchy song playing in the supermarket, and you can go on your phone, and download it for 79p instantly while you're waiting at the till, that's what it's like today). Making albums that cheap and easily accessible would definitely increase their sales imo.
Also artists should stop creating 10-track albums and then sell them at the same proce as a 17-track deluxe edition of any other artist. Either stop making 10-track albums (imo 13/14 is a minimum) or reduce the price of said album
Another point is that the physical versions are about €20,- (i guess around 17£ in the Uk) for a normal version, up to €28 for a deluxe. That's ridiculous right? This wil lead to people going on itunes and eventually cherry pick like I explained in point 1
Not really. Compared to some of the prices people pay in Europe and other parts of the world we get a bargain here in the UK, only America/Canada is cheaper I think.
If you do your research before you purchase an album i.e. listening to samples or even streaming the entire album you can't really go wrong. I think albums are some of the best things you can buy as regards value for money, how many things can you buy for under £10 and still be using them 20+ years from now? Not many. People spend a lot more than that on excess food, alcohol, clothes etc that they don't really need and these things are gone before you know it.
1. They need to stop making songs available to purchase separately unless they are a single. 2. Release one version of the album only, none of this deluxe edition rubbish. People will understandably look for ways to get things for free if they feel they are getting ripped off. 3. Close down as many of the file sharing sites as possible, I thought they were getting somewhere by closing down Megaupload but that was just a small fish in a big sea.
Singles released and bought contribute towards a complete my album reduced purchase of album
Albums priced 7 pounds digital 7.99 cd
iTunes has killed the album. Why buy an album when you can pick individual tracks?
I'd also say that there should be bonus tracks on the CD version, not on the digital version.
For the record I live in Ireland!!! And YES like I stated they are too expensive!!!!
€17 for a new album. Hmv often have 2 albums for €25. I still think that's too expensive for an album.
If you're happy to pay that for an album then go ahead.
I can safely say that has been the main reason I haven't purchased an album in a while... Solely down to price.
It's £10 for a new album here, and HMV often have 2 for £10 or £15, I'm surprised it's so much more in Ireland, I can see why you think that is too expensive! :eek:
Sorry I assumed you were in England. No I wouldn't pay that, absolutely not. Is there any way you can find these albums cheaper online? I have a friend who lives in Holland who regularly purchases them from play.com and says it's far cheaper that way as they even include the shipping. Which is crazy when you think about it!
pixiegirl123 £10? You shouldn't be paying more than £8.99 for a new release!
Perhaps I was wrong then, only £1.01 off though, so I don't feel completely stupid
You can still buy chart CDs for that price or less, can't you? Effectively no price increase for 25 years isn't bad.
Who buys music to make an artist grateful? I bought CDs because I liked the music. Piracy in the early 80's meant having a friend or relative who had bought the album and trusted you to borrow it without damaging it. You needed a hi-fi wth a turntable and casstte recorder. And a blank cassette tapes that got hissier with every play.
Nowadays, the ease with which anyone can freely find and download near-perfect copies of the very latest albums online onto a tiny portion of their computer hard drive and them copy them onto to their iPods, mobile phones, etc, makes CD album buying seem like a mug's game.