Hmm, seems Ashlee's CD is not burning up any records, in fact it's projected that she will only sell about 50,000 to 55,000 copies it's first couple of weeks, which sounds like a lot but then again doesn't when you consider that Mariah Carey's E=mc2 sold 463,000 in its first week alone. But exactly how much does that equal in dollars?
Hmm, well I had no idea so I looked it up. According to musiclaw.info (after I had read thru scratching my head) the best figure I could get is that the artist makes about $1 off of the sale of a full CD (I'm not counting iTunes and things like that here, just the basic CD from your local Walmart or where ever). So with let's say 55,000 CDs sold at say $17.00 that equals $935,000, sounds good to me. But wait, that's total of the sales, then you count all the people with their hands out, that's not that much.
So with 55,000 copies you'd think that Ashlee's take would be like $55,000. But, the record company gets their cut first and must be recouped for how much they paid to put the CD out there in the first place. So lets say the CD cost the record company $250,000 to make then the artist has to pay that out of their payday before they can get any royalties from the CD sales. Holy crap, this means that approximately a quarter-mill CDs need to be sold before the artist actually collects. Ashlee's screwed I'm thinking.
It all sounds pretty confusing. So how do the music stars actually make any money? Well I guess the first would be to sell a lot of albums, but I guess Ashlee's past that here. It sounds like concerts are the main money maker and all the other things stars get paid for, endorsements, perfume making, all that fun stuff. Amazing how crazy getting paid can be in the music biz.
|