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Life's A Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

Uncharted

January 23, 2009 by Amanda Ameer

I learned a lot about the Billboard charts while subbing at the record label this fall. In the classical realm at least, it’s shocking how little of a difference there is sales-wise between debuting at the top spot and coming in around number four or five. All the more reason not to turn our collective noses up at coverage on targeted blogs that get 600 – 1000 hits a day: they may not have the readership numbers of your local paper, but that’s 600 potential buyers already engaged in what you’re trying to sell. And if 100 of them buy the record, it may actually make a difference.

In a similar vein, here’s something to chew on, from Ronen from Brooklyn Vegan from MTV: The band Animal Collective released their new album on a “deluxe double-LP 180-gram gatefold vinyl
format” along with a full digital download on January 6, while the album wasn’t available on CD until January 20. MTV writer Gil Kaufman incorrectly but interestingly predicted that the album would make history by breaking the charts with vinyl sales alone:

We were really pulling for Panda Bear and crew. When I wrote last week that Animal Collective might make it onto the Billboard 200 charts this week based on the first-week sales of the vinyl edition of their Merriweather Post Pavilion album (raved about this week by our own James Montgomery), the underdog quality of that potential feat was kind of exciting … and subversive.

But, alas, despite selling out all 4,500 copies of the first run of Pavilion
almost instantly across North America, with so many of those sales
happening in indie shops that don’t report to Nielsen SoundScan, the
scrappy sonic experimentalists just didn’t make the cut.

According to next week’s Billboard albums chart, Pavilion
officially moved 1,500 copies, which put them just outside the big
game, even in this moribund time of year when the majority of the
albums in the top 200 saw double-digit sales dips.
Had they been able to scare up another 1,000 official sales, they might
have sneaked in above the likes of former “American Idol” Kellie
Pickler, Lifehouse, OneRepublic and Framing Hanley, all of whom sold in
the 2,400 realm, which was enough to sneak them onto the bottom of the
charts.

Better luck next week, when Pavilion is officially released
on January 20, with a good chance to score an old-fashioned chart debut
thanks to the flood of already rapturous reviews it’s received as one
of the best albums of the year so far.

In classical music – at least in the US – I think limited edition special album packaging and then digital-only releases is the way of The Future. Audience members can take home true souvenirs of their concert experiences (get their discs signed by the artist, etc.), and record labels won’t have to worry about pitching physical product to a shrinking retail market. Additionally, the availability of special product at concerts gives marketing departments another reason to e mail out about their concerts to their lists – “this concert is the only place you can buy a physical copy of the new Hilary Hahn album” – and gives artist publicists and PR departments an interesting state-of-the-industry story to pitch as well. Perhaps the Animal Collective timetable is a good place to start – for a month, the album is only available in special edition form at concerts and digital, and then is released on a disc – but then again, the physical CD follow-up is becoming increasingly less of an option.

Filed Under: Main

Amanda Ameer

is a publicist who started First Chair Promotion in July 2007. She currently represents Hilary Hahn, Gabriel Kahane, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sondra Radvanovsky, Julia Wolfe, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lawrence Brownlee. She thanks Chris Owyoung at One Louder Photo for taking the above photo very quickly and painlessly. Read More…

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