http://latimesblogs.latim...splay.html

Competing CD sales strategies on display
09:09 AM PT, Apr 9 2009
Two snapshots of the music business were on display on the U.S. pop chart, with Prince's distribution strategy proving to be a bigger winner this week than the one used by rapper Flo Rida.

While Prince landed at No. 2, selling 168,000 copies of his three-disc "LotusFlow3r," released exclusively through Target, Flo Rida struggled to turn success selling digital tracks into album sales.

Flo Rida is a king of digital downloads. Already this year, his single "Right Round," which was released in January, has sold 2.4 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released by Billboard. His song "Low," featuring T-Pain, was the No. 3-selling digital track of 2008, with just under 3 million copies.

Yet both of his full-length albums have had trouble gaining traction, with last year's "Mail on Sunday" and this week's "R.O.O.T.S." selling fewer than 100,000 copies each in their first week. "R.O.O.T.S." landed at No. 8 on this week's chart, selling 55,000 copies.

"The challenge of the entire music business is converting a massive amount of singles buyers out there to album buyers," said James Lopez, Atlantic Records' senior vice president of urban marketing. He added that Flo Rida has sold more than 10 million singles worldwide. On the flip side, Lopez said, Flo Rida's "Mail on Sunday," has sold about 381,000 copies to date in the U.S.

Atlantic allowed fans to purchase "Right Round" for nearly two months prior to the release of "R.O.O.T.S." Did the label consider withholding the single and making it available only to purchasers of the album?

"There's a lot of debate, within this building and within this industry," Lopez said. "Do you not make something available when it's being demanded now? Do you leave that money on the table, no matter what the margins are? Do you not sell 2 million singles before your release date and wait for the pent-up demand, or do you take advantage and trust the people who buy the singles? . . . I don't think we've quite figured it out."

Prince, meanwhile, has long experimented with release models. He bundled his 2004 album "Musicology" with tickets to his concert and gave away the 2007 album "Planet Earth" in a British newspaper.

In hooking up exclusively with a big-box retailer, he is following in the path of the Eagles, AC/DC, Christina Aguilera and Guns N' Roses.

"The gatekeepers must change," Prince told The Times earlier this year while discussing his decision to work without the help of a major label, releasing the album on his NPG imprint.

AC/DC and the Eagles each had No. 1 albums after aligning with Wal-Mart. AC/DC, in fact, had the No. 5 album of 2008, moving close to 3 million copies of "Black Ice." Prince's latest is a slight boost from the first week's sales of 2007's "Planet Earth," which bowed at No. 3 after selling 96,000 copies. His 2006 effort, "3121," sold 183,000 copies in its first week.

"LotusFlow3r" came with a budget price of $11.98. It was the do-it-yourself model on a grander scale, as Prince could keep retail prices low, say label executives, by recording the album in his own studio and forgoing a label deal, thereby not needing to split CD revenues with a record company and a distributor.

Additionally, the retail exclusive model offers another benefit to artists: It's now standard industry practice for major exclusives to be "one-way sales," meaning the retailer guarantees to buy a specified number of albums that are nonreturnable.

--Todd Martens

Good article. I love how he broke it down that Flo Rida hasn't sold hardly any albums, yet he is still the king of downloads. How crazy is that when you can sell 10 million downloads and only 300,000 albums.

Prince's legend within the industry continues to grow.

daPrettyman said:

cause most artists like flo can only have a 3 minute jingle as opposed 2 50+ minute opus

but in all seriousness who would want a WHOLE ALBUM of that dross from a dude named Flo Rida... all he's good for would be singles and even those are weeeaaaakkkkk!!

daPrettyman said:

Not really crazy at all. Out of all 3 CD's Prince just released, I really only like 1 damn song. Most people don't want to buy a cd or 3 full of crap just to have the 1 song they actually want to hear. Which is exactly why iTunes and file sharing are so popular.

L4OATheOriginal said:

i think it's also the attention span of the average music listener. everything is now bite sized.

Milty said:

I agree with u Milty. I applaud Prince for not releasing downloads via websites because of this. If you are a music fan, you will appreciate the album as a complete work of art and not just a sound bite.

Ummm... what decade is this? How is this any different than the debate between album and singles sales back when it was 45's and LP's?

The simple answer to this is that without those millions of single downloads, there would have been no interest in Flo Rida at all, and he would have sold about 20 copies of his album when it came out, instead of what he did sell. That's how it's always been. You release singles to advertise a product/artist. Some people are only going to go with the single and some are going to be ineterested in hearing more and buying the album.

I really don't know why any of this is news. This is basically just a paradigm shift back to where we were up until the mid-90's, really, but with updated formats and technology.

The single is nothing new, nor is the single vs. album debate.

I remember reading about how Sonny and Cher released "I Got You Babe" and spent hours after hours and days after days constantly calling the radio stations everywhere, changing their voices all the time to request their own song.... Sonny was already learning marketing before the song came out but I remember Cher attributing all those endless calls to the popularity of the song that became a hit.....My how things have changed!!!

errant said:

The difference is that in the past, if a single sold 2 million copies, the album would at least go gold. Now, that's not the case at all.

Prince, you might want to add a copule of extra body guards as baby there is some real hating gonna on.

daPrettyman said:

The KING of downloads FLO-RIDA gets half a cent per download...now you do the math on that one.

daPrettyman said:

Because singles now carry the 99 cent price tag, they are like crack basically, and there is almost NO CONNECTION to having a hit single and to album sales. I really think we are going to see yet another shift back to limited time singles, and labels cutting off iTunes and letting them sell singles when they are trying to push an album. The reason that labels dont really care now is that someone like FLO-Rida sells a gazillion downloads which nets the label tons of money and iTunes tons of money, but FLO gets about a penny per download.

lastdecember said:

Not at iTunes. Singles are as high as $1.29 now. , but u are definitely correct. I've heard Aretha Franklin and Prince state how they aren't happy with the way iTunes handles their funds. They give them nothing.
[Edited 4/9/09 18:53pm]

I've never even heard of that other guy.

Genesia said:

daPrettyman said:

ah, well, you know, before 1989 (was it?) a gold record was a MILLION copies. so the "decline of the music industry" has been going on for quite some time. for AT LEAST a decade before it was easy to pirate it on the internet. they had to lower the standards for gold to 500,000 copies and and 1,000,000 for platinum because of it.


just sayin'. pretty soon, the new platinum is going to be 100,000 copies

so, singles do not work for Prince anymore so he has to think of new ways to get the music out - like 3cds for ten bucks! brilliant!