How much does it cost to release an album that's already been recorded?

March 17, 2005 8:43 PM

How much does it cost to release an album that's already been recorded?

The question occurred to me thanks to the recent kerfuffle over Fiona Apple's album. If people are willing to buy it, why aren't they selling it? Is there a minimum number of copies they'd need to sell to break even? (Or will low sales figures end up making them look bad? Or what?)

posted by nebulawindphone to media & arts (11 comments total)

Distribution costs, perhaps? It doesn't cost much to make a short run of CDs or vinyl (~$1000-2500 to start, depending on format and packaging), relative to the cost of getting it into distribution channels. Getting into a distribution channel may be the same as getting a label to agree to distribute it for you, which involves a record deal where you as the artists will not see any profit until xth record gets sold. (In fact, you can even owe money if you don't move units.)
posted by AlexReynolds at 9:40 PM on March 17, 2005

One answer: Steve Albini's The Problem With Music.

There are many bands that would do just fine on smaller labels, but are contractually bound to labels that have mass-market economics. The list of bands with unreleased albums is ... well, long.

> For a major label, the break-even-point for CD sales is approximately 250,000 copies.

Note that artists are often dropped by majors when their sales fall below 1 million -- or for top artists, several million. Hell, EMI paid Mariah Carey $30M to walk.

Self-publishing seems like an answer, but it's a difficult proposition (in any field, not just music); there are fixed costs and minimum runs, and getting a retail-ready CD (as opposed to a concert card-table sale) involves sinking a bit of cash. The record industry works because of this; they front you the money and then you have to work it off, basically, through touring to support the album sales.

With Apple, it's crazy but there's almost no reasonable amount of money the record company would take to allow her to shop the album -- which they consider their contractual property -- to another label or to self-publish.
posted by dhartung at 9:41 PM on March 17, 2005

Random somewhat-related statistic.

In 2003, the music industry released 28,000 titles on CD in Canada

Over 20,000 of them sold less than 100 units each.

It's a numbers game. They need the hits to make pay for all the misses.
posted by winston at 10:02 PM on March 17, 2005

It depends on what you mean by "release." If you just want to have some pressed up to sell at shows that can be done for less than a grand. Distribution, promotion, etc. are seperate issues.
posted by wsg at 12:18 AM on March 18, 2005

Simply releasing would be relatively inexpensive. Major labels have their own distribution systems and those sales teams could quite easily offer Fiona's album to retail. Retail then decides how many they will take based on a number of factors i.e. the marketing and promotion plan of the label, artist profile, accessibility of the music, etc. Essentially, if all those things are strong and retailers think they can sell a lot, they'll take a large number of copies. Without all of that backing (i.e. financial commitment) from the label though, retail will probably only take a few copies and in that case, the album will probably die a quick death due to low visibility.

If Sony doesn't think the album will sell and are already in the red from recording costs, they will be hesitant to throw more money at it for marketing, etc. So they'll just end up sitting on it until they can figure out what to do with it.

My personal opinion is that they should put it out and get behind it. That is, instead of asking an artist to go back and record something more accessible, they need to get more creative in their marketing efforts.

The best example of this was the Wilco record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Warner Reprise thought it was a stiff so they sold it back to the band at a ridiculously low price. The band then re-sold it Nonesuch (another division of Warner) and the record became the biggest of Wilco's career.

Lesson for labels - have faith in the artists you sign. Or don't sign them in the first place.
posted by gfrobe at 1:33 AM on March 18, 2005

With Apple, it's crazy but there's almost no reasonable amount of money the record company would take to allow her to shop the album -- which they consider their contractual property -- to another label or to self-publish.

One part of this problem is that the guys running the record label probably don't see it as a big seller, but on the other hand won't let her release it on another label and prove them wrong. I remember when James signed for Sire they were left to rot because they felt the band were out of fashion but were too scared to release them from their contract unless they became hugely successful (which eventually they did).

I think when A&R guys change at labels this can also lead to problems where they dislike the previous guys artists and would rather promote their favoured artists.

This dog in the manger attitude also pervades the film industry too.
posted by dodgygeezer at 1:43 AM on March 18, 2005

Over 20,000 of them sold less than 100 units each.

Hmmm.. depends on your definition of a unit. This is how I learned what a "unit" is: after a gig in Budapest I went to a smokey bar with a couple of my band, and while beering away we met another friend, and English writer, who was there with some other smart, tweedy, small English guy who was introduced as "My old friend Neil." Neil, I was told , was a musician. Three beers in, he asked what my band played, I answered "Old style Romanian Jewish fiddle music."

"Oh, rather a narrow market, that."

I replied "Not really, we just released our first CD and tonight we sold enough that we hit over our 900 mark in sales."

To which he says "Oh, I know how bad that feels. We usually move over a thousand units in Los Angeles alone, and last week I heard we hadn't hit a million in LA, things leveled at 900 units."

"No, we haven't sold a million. We have sold nine hundred. Nine hundred CDs..."

It turns out our drinking buddy was Neil Tenant of the Pet Shop Boys. A unit means 1000 Cds.
posted by zaelic at 2:03 AM on March 18, 2005

Heh -- great story, Zaelic!

In the case of Fiona, there's no way her management would allow the label to just press 5,000 copies for the fans. And it wouldn't be worth it to Sony to go to that hassle anyway. I agree that they should give it a proper release, but it appears they aren't going to. Instead, I think the appropriate thing to do is to sell it back to Fiona, and let her go somewhere else -- the way things happened with Wilco. I can (at least sort of) understand a label not wanting to throw good money after bad, if they've lost faith in an artist. I can't understand, however, a label just blatantly standing in the way of that artist having a career. Essentially, they have a marriage that has gone bad -- they just need to get a divorce and get on with their lives.

I guess that's not a direct answer to your question about how much it costs to put out a record: the anser to that is "as much as you want to spend." Manufacturing is the least of it, the real expense comes after that, with marketing, distribution, promotion, etc. There are thousands of bands every week that release their own record, but have no idea what to do with it once they've pressed 'em up. Closets, attics and basements from coast to coast are filled with the fruits of these efforts.
posted by spilon at 7:51 AM on March 18, 2005

zaelic,

I don't think that's what a unit means in this case. Sales of 10,000 would be quite good in Canada (remember that Canada has one tenth of the population of the US, so that would be like selling 100,000 in the US).
posted by winston at 7:59 AM on March 19, 2005

> In the case of Fiona, there's no way her management would allow the label to just press 5,000 copies for the fans. And it wouldn't be worth it to Sony to go to that hassle anyway. I agree that they should give it a proper release, but it appears they aren't going to. Instead, I think the appropriate thing to do is to sell it back to Fiona, and let her go somewhere else -- the way things happened with Wilco.

Seems to me that a situation like this one would be _perfect_ for the iTMS or some other online distribution system. No overhead beyond what it would take to (officially) encode the songs, slap some metadata in them and design a cover (if one hasn't been designed already). Toss it on the iTMS, release word to all of her various fan sites that the "world premiere" of the album will be through online distribution, and go from there.

Sure, a few people won't be entirely satisfied (no physical CD with printed artwork, liner notes et. al.; grumbles about the DRM, etc.), but at least there would be some sort of "official" release, and they'd make more money off it through legal downloads than they are now by keeping the masters locked up and having people spread the bootlegs around the 'net.
posted by djwudi at 9:49 AM on March 19, 2005

ObNotice: I work for Sony Music

A unit = 1 CD. Neil was shorthanding '900' for '900K'

Tho i can't speak officially for the company, from what i've heard its more complicated than just "Fiona delivered an album and we dont want to put it out".. The last two albums went platinum, of course Epic would want to put out another Fiona record, to say nothing of the current fan backlash.

So, I'm sure everyone will continue to paint us as 'the evil megaconglomerate who are sitting on piles of money laughing maniacally as we sit on some lost classic', but there are other factors involved.
posted by softlord at 6:01 PM on March 24, 2005