In case you missed it, Adele’s newest album is destroying sales records. This in a climate where the media keeps telling us “the music industry is dead” “the album is dead” “physical media is dead”. Yet somehow Adele’s convinced 3.3 million people to buy her album (half of which are physical CD sales). Why is Adele getting people to buy a full album, when those people are settling for streaming or single track sales for nearly every other artist? And what can that teach the music biz that they need to change?
Not sure I endorse all of them (and I’m not sure Adele is the direction I want the music industry to be going), but:
That there’s a market for pop music that isn’t about sex, bling, or gettin’ turnt up in da club?
Adele’s album is being bought by people who are not regular CD buyers. I’m sure the last album some of these folks bought was either something my Taylor Swift or Adele’s last album. It’s a unicorn.
It’s only a unicorn because the companies aren’t producing more of them. Somehow the idea got started that people stop listening to music sometime in their early twenties. So music companies are all chasing the young audience.
Adults enjoy music too. And they have more money and are less likely to pirate their music. So you’d think music companies would figure it out and start trying to offer them some products.
Country music is thriving because they’ve figured this out and they do have an adult audience.
Historically, music stops being a vital part of most people’s lives after a point. I’m sure I can produce the supporting data if I need to.
They do. Read the article Thudlow Boink linked. Lesson #1 is:
Who are some of the top selling artists of the past decade? Adele, Michael Buble, Josh Groban and Susan Boyle. Who buys their albums? Moms. Who doesn’t have time to illegally download music and is constantly shopping at Target? Your mom. Why record companies don’t focus more effort on Adult Contemporary pop music is beyond me. Which leads us to…
All true, but we’re not talking about people who constantly seek out and purchase new music. These people can buy millions of albums, but they only buy one or two every year. There is plenty of great music these folks would love, like the last album by The Mavericks, but these consumers need to have music deliberately sold to them - they don’t seek it out.
An Adele sized marketing campaign is very expensive, and they only did it because it was a sure bet. Again, a rare and magical beast.
I honestly don’t pay enough attention to country music to have a valid opinion about it.
They’re emotionally invested. And it’s a big investment. It’s mostly a female thing.
It’s like a sports Final or something - a big fucking deal, to them
Why was it a sure bet for Adele, and why wouldn’t it be for plenty of other musicians?
Her previous album was #1 on the Billboard 200 for a record-breaking 24 weeks in an era where almost nobody buys albums anymore and produced three number-one singles on the Hot 100 - and that from someone who was practically unknown before its release. That kind of instant rise to the top is pretty rare these days when there’s just so much content being produced on a daily basis.
I suspect that the music industry already knew that it’s more profitable to find a small number of charming/interesting performers, promote them and their life strongly, and cash in than to develop a large pool of talented musicians.
That is not to say that Adele isn’t a talented musician, just that it’s tangential to the lesson to be learned.
That there will always be a market for a small handful of bland, generic, flavor-of-the-month pop stars?
Yeah, she technically sings well. No, I can’t sing as well as her, but there are tons of people who can, who aren’t nearly as rich or famous as she. And next to them, she is completely unremarkable in every way. She just lucked out in getting hoisted up by the Generic Pop Star Manufacturing Machine.
The record business used to be a whole bunch of tiny companies scattered all over the world. Janis Ian said that she she was signed in 1963, there were 22 record companies in New York City alone, all with their own presidents, staff and marketing departments. There were regional hit records, and people could be signed by tiny companies that would work their butts off to promote a record. Ian said they released her song Society’s Child three different times over a period of 18 months trying to get it to succeed.
The industry has since “evolved” into 3 humongous corporations.
Such entities do a good job of selling very large quantities of a few things, but a terrible job of selling small numbers of a lot of things.
But the Net made it possible for people to find exactly the music they want to hear, even buying it directly from the musicians themselves.
They have sold the public the idea that this change is somehow “the death of music.” It’s not, but it probably is the death of the music industry.
Good.
In terms of the ‘industry dying’ and such I want to throw a data point out there.
Adele’s causing all sorts of wow at 3.3 million copies. Good for her and such.
But previously, selling 3.3 million copies was nice but not a real miracle.
Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill moved 15 million copies.
Brittany Spears Oops…I did it again moved 10 million copies.
Norah Jones Come Away With Me moved 11 million copies.
These are the things that indicate troubles in the industry vis-a-vis album sales. Standards have changed so much that 3.3 million copies gets a huge write up when it wouldn’t crack the top 100 of all time. The fine, but it’s not a show stopper.
Hell, another indicator comes from Wiki’s list of best US sales of albums. Adele’s prior album = 11MM sold - is the only one from the last 10 years on the list. Prior to that it’s Usher in 2004 with 10MM.
Flavor of the month? Adele has been a star for six years.
It’s a figure of speech.
I’m mom-aged and would much rather listen to Franz Ferdinand, Foster the People, or some old punk than Adele.
Adele, along with Buble, Grobin, et al, is as basic as they come. Bland and inoffensive pop for the middle-aged and middle-class.
I thought the “wow” was that she sold those 3 million in a very short period of time. I don’t think Jagged Little Pill sold its 15 million copies in its first week, nor even 3+ million copies as Adele’s album has. According to Wiki, JLP was released in June 1995 and broke 12 million in February 1997. It broke 15 million this year with its 20th Anniversary re-release so I’m guessing it didn’t sell much between 1997 and 2015.
None of which is to detract from JLP’s success but I don’t think it’s meaningful to compare a 20 year old album to one that’s been out for (I guess a couple weeks now?)
I wouldn’t call Adele “generic”. At least not in the same way that Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Ke$ha, Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Iggy Azalea, Charlie XCX, and Ariana Grande are generic. That is to say, some marketing exec somewhere decided “this girl has a look we want and a sound that’s within the range that we can put through our autotuner to make us millions”.
Adele is generic in the same way that Coldplay, Amy Winehouse, John Mayer, Passenger, Lana Del Ray and Snore-a Jones are generic.
I’m amazed that people are still buying that.
One thing that I find appealing about Adele’s music, and it’s not really the music per se, but I appreciate that she writes a lot of her own stuff. That goes a long way for me.