Why are albums measured in # of albums sold, while movies are measured in $ of tickets sold. If movies where measured in # of tickets sold, we could easily compare Jaws to The Passion …"
Sorry … “movies were”
Dunno, but It’s Always Been Done That Way since the beginning of time (or at least since the 1940s.)
Both methods have their merits. Comparing units sold allows you to compare the popularity of two different items, wheras the total revenue is more relevant for business watchers and takes into account differences in prices (e.g. a $10 book vs. a $5 book, or a show at the dollar theatre vs. a full-price evening show.)
I know in the video game industry the best market info out there has figures for both price AND quantity. However, that’s not the stuff you see for free in the press–It’s information you have to pay to get access to. I don’t know whether that’s true for the book, music, and movie industries as well.
WAG: Because movie ticket prices are infinitely more variable than CD prices.
If X number of people shell out for a CD, you’ve got a pretty good idea if it was successful enough for the company to bother with more CDs from the artist.
If X number of tickets are sold for a movie… Well, they might have been matinee tickets, or they could have been full price adult tickets, or they could have been children’s tickets, or… You get the picture. 1000 tickets for a matinee is only worth 500 adult tickets for an evening show. And if the movie doesn’t make money, it doesn’t matter if it tanked with 1000 matinee shows or 500 evening.
But, there is a problem with measuring music albums in units sold. The number of units sold refers to the number sent to retailers, rather than the number bought by customers by retailers.
Big-name acts, therefore, get inflated numbers because more units tend to be sent to retailers. I believe record companies have even set minimums for how many units retailers have to take.
Anyhoo…
Any company can tell you in an instant about sales, either in terms of units or total revenues. The movie industry knows exactly how many tickets were sold and the music industry knows exactly how much the albums grossed. But, as others have noted, the business is really about making money, not how many people purchase your product.
As long as the distribution and pricing of books, records, newspapers, etc. was tightly controlled, people could easily tell that more units = more money. Movies, on the other hand, have had a pretty variable price structure (what with matinees, double features, second runs and so on) since at least the 1930s. Measuring in terms of gross was about the only way to compare apples to apples.
Incorrect.
SoundScan actually takes data from POS transactions and that information is used by Billboard, etc. to create record sales charts.
Yet another WAG: the production costs on movies vary widely, while the cost of producing an album doesn’t vary all that much.
In the movie business, it’s a source of constant worry whether that movie will make back the $20 million (or whatever) it cost to make. And while I’m sure there’s some variance in the cost of making an album, the costs never even approach those of the movie industry. Music sales are more about the race to sell copies than recouping of massive investment capital.
“WAG: Because movie ticket prices are infinitely more variable than CD prices.”
Perhaps, but I doubt that movie prices are that much more variable than book or (especially) videogame prices, both of which use units sold as the primary measure.
" Measuring in terms of gross was about the only way to compare apples to apples."
The movie business uses some pretty goofy practices when reporting weekly figures, so they’re not really comparing apples with apples either. Apparently for the weekly figures the studios count Canadian and US dollars at par–that is, they treat one Canadian dollar as if it were worth one US dollar. This obviously skews the box office in favor of movies that do well north of the border.
http://www.moviecitynews.com/columnists/klady/2003/030202.html
The cost of making movies varies enormously and is often publicly known. The powers that be in Hollywood are more interested in how big was the return on investment rather than how many fannies were in the seats. Since the death of the studio system, everybody wants to know how much you can afford to pay Julia Roberts and still make a boatload of money. The music industry works a bit differently, the artists often have long term deals with a label and there isn’t the same competive need to know about profitablility.
Oops! I was thinking about the best-seller lists for books. Unless someone wants to correct me on that?
That said, I’m sure record companies would prefer, on occasion, to use the numer of units shipped to retailers rather than sold to customers.
Can anybody tell me who exactly is in charge of presenting “Gold” and “Platinum” records, and such?
Anyhoo…
Movies and records also have different purchasing trends. Many people will go watch a movie multiple times, but very few people go out and buy multiple copies of the same album.