From: David Wallace
Subject: Re: SuBo

i think the more interesting story is that Shakira only sold 89K first week.  ALL that hype – all the $$$ spent on marketing – the award show appearances – that TERRIBLE video – cover of Rolling Stone, etc. etc. – and it debuts at #15 with 89K sold.  What’s next week going to look like?  

Look at the Fifty Cent numbers – debuts with 160K (#5) – drops 60% second week to 65K (#20).  This guy has sold 16 Million records in THIS decade.  His last record debuted with 700K first week.  That was only two years ago.  He should have bet SuBo he would outsell her this week so that people would give a shit that he was releasing a record.

Give Susan Boyle credit.  She’s got fans.

Do Shakira and Curtis/Fifty Cent have any fans?

We’ve seen a breakdown of the edifice throughout this soon to end decade.  Not only have CD sales declined, but the way of promoting those albums has too.

People forget that when ‘N Sync sold two million records the first week out, MTV was still all powerful, still the tastemaker.  That’s just as important as Napster/theft.  Everybody was focused on the music television station. Now?

In 2000, most people were on dialup, if they were online at all.  There was no YouTube, no MySpace, Google was not a household word.  We were all positively old school.  In a hangover of the nineties.  When the market raged and there was money for all.  You spent willy-nilly, you felt like a winner, a world-beater.  Boy are those days through.

The record business’ clients were MTV, radio and retail, in that order.  MTV isn’t even about music anymore, radio is a shadow of its former self and it’s hard to even find the album you want in a physical format.  The indie stores have died and the big boxes keep lowering their number of SKUs.

Still, if you’re the Dave Matthews Band, you can move 424,000 copies of an album with no significant radio footprint the week it comes out.  Because Dave Matthews has fans.

Does Fifty Cent have any real fans?

He’s not a lovable guy.  And his tracks have dropped in quality.

A fan buys the new album without hearing it first.

A casual buyer waits to hear if there’s a hit.  THAT’S the paradigm that was established in the nineties.  It was about the track, not the act.  If you’ve got a hot cut, I’m interested.  If not, I’m not even paying attention, you’re not even on my radar screen.

So today’s key is to fight for fans, not spins, not media clippings.

Sure, spins still generate sales.  But usually only of the track itself, a low profit item.  And because the audience has scattered since the nineties, Top Forty, the true radio driver of significant sales, means less than ever before.  So, major labels play the old game to ever less success.  But even more fascinating is if there’s not a hit single, then the whole project is doomed.  How many Alicia Keys fans are there really?  Sure, we know who she is, Clive’s told us she’s his protege, but when her single doesn’t hit do you even risk putting out an album?

Mariah Carey has faltered.

Shakira…  David Wallace has it right.  She was everywhere.  And she’s not a hatable character.  But it turns out they only loved her singing about the veracity of hips.  She’s like Jennifer Aniston on "Friends".  Remove her from the sitcom and most people just don’t care.

The tabloids still care.  But they’re not about acting.  They’re purely about fame.  And although Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters have made fame without talent pay, traditionally that’s got a short shelf life, and it’s a bad way to play in the music business.  The music business is all about down the line, catalog sales, endless sold out arenas.  The music business is all about tomorrow, not today.  It shouldn’t be what have I done for you lately, but REMEMBER WHAT I DID FOR YOU ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!

All the classic rock acts are touring on this.  And there are a lot of them.

But people with one hit can play a club.  And when the hit fades, they can barely work at all.

So don’t bother hating Rihanna, Katy Perry, all those faces you see too much whose music seems irrelevant and evanescent.  They won’t be around for long.  Just like Miley and Jonas and…

Taylor Swift?

She’s selling something different.  It IS about the music.  You’ve got to start there.

Then you have to bond your audience to you.  It doesn’t have to be everyone, just enough to make a living. And hopefully, the crowd is still growing.

You see there’s no consensus anymore.  In anything.  Have we ever been more divided politically?  Have we ever had more niches of entertainment, that each individual could burrow deeper into to his heart’s delight, connecting with like-minded people and not worrying about the masses?

The major label game, as played for the past two decades, is dying of its own accord.  It’s got nothing to do with theft.  It’s got to do with the splintering of the marketplace.  Now you’ve got to come up with something great, that’s lasting, and convince a hard core of fans that you’re real.  You need a steady stream of product to keep them engaged.  The megatour every three years is less important than just showing up on a regular basis, sans production, everywhere those interested live.

Bottom line?

This is good for music.

Dave Matthews Band’s fans believe the new album is good.  Doesn’t matter what you think.

U2 fans believe the new album sucks.  And since word can get out so easily today, it stalls in the marketplace.

So, your music must be considered good.  By the target audience!  Then you need to focus on growing that audience by motivating those presently interested, not trying to convert blocks of people who don’t care by flogging them again and again in old media.

Yes, old media is a huge fan of Shakira.  She’s cute, she’s sexy, she’s smart.

But what does that have to do with music?

To have a lasting music career, you’ve got to put the music first.