{"id":7547,"date":"2011-06-08T16:59:45","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T20:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=7547"},"modified":"2011-06-08T17:00:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T21:00:15","slug":"lady-gaga-and-amazon-com-do-the-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/lady-gaga-and-amazon-com-do-the-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Gaga and Amazon.com…do the math"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine, after giving Lady Gaga<\/strong> crap for selling 440,000 of her 1.1million CDs last week through Amazon.com at a slashed price of $0.99 (for the whole record, not a single),\u00a0are now giving her crap for only selling 74,000 this week (all at $10\u2013$18 per disc, I assume). And it’s STILL #1.<\/p>\n

I also think it’s cheating.\u00a0So is a “free download” with your concert ticket (a-hem..Bon Jovi<\/strong>, Prince<\/strong>) or a CD included in the local newspaper (guilty again, Prince), although the claim on all three is that they charged the full rate on their end and there is no law against a loss-leader at the retail level.<\/p>\n

So Gaga sells Born This Way to Amazon<\/em> for $9.00 and Amazon instead of selling it for $11.99 sells it for $0.99.\u00a0$8.01 loss per\u00a0downloaded record\u00a0x 440,000 = $3.5 million dollars. That’s a big single-day loss!<\/p>\n

OK, Maybe they got the “Gaga Special” and paid only $6 per download – $0.99 = $5.01 x 440,000 = $2.2 million dollars. Still a big loss. Can’t see that being the whole story.<\/p>\n

I smell a rat.<\/p>\n

How long before a major artist does a FREE release of their new record but includes a paid sponsor to cover their profits?\u00a0Would AT&T pay $10 million to The Rolling Stones<\/strong> in order for them to offer their new record download for nothing?\u00a0If so, could they release it only as a digital release, have no promotion, no publicity, no marketing, no videos (save an exclusive interview and streaming concert on the AT&T website), and<\/em> have the #1 record and far more money then they could ever get from a CD in the current music market? (With the standard business model, they would have to sell 20-30 million to make $10 million,\u00a0truthfully\u00a0much more than that.)<\/p>\n

#4 with 71,000 sold is Eddie\u00a0Vedder<\/strong>‘s Ukulele<\/em> record. The label makes $350,000 and Ed, if he has a sweetheart deal make get $80\u2013100K. Think the Hawaiian Tourism Group has some cash to sponsor the follow-up?<\/p>\n

Sponsoring concert tours used to be selling out, then doing commercials was selling out. For $2 million in cash you better believe that Zaxby’sPresents Jungleland2’s Greatest Hits<\/em> will be available from a fast food website near you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolling Stone magazine, after giving Lady Gaga crap for selling 440,000 of her 1.1million CDs last week through Amazon.com at a slashed price of $0.99 (for the whole record, not a single),\u00a0are now giving her crap for only selling 74,000 this week (all at $10\u2013$18 per disc, I assume). And it’s STILL #1. I also […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[87],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}