I’m curious to find out how many copies of a piping cd sell typically. Perhaps they just sell as many as are manufactured until they’re all gone? Am I right in assuming that a liam o’flynn cd, say, sells way more than one by another piper brilliant in their own right but perhaps mainly known by people who make it their business to keep abreast of the piping scene? Perhaps, if this is the case, that’s why the production on a lof cd is so sumptuous, with orchestral numbers and immaculate arrangements, because the label can afford the outlay?
It is unlikely that a CD label is going to let you know what the sales are for any CDs…they are notorious for not even letting the artists know, as that might mean paying up correct royalties.
I suspect that you are correct that the sales projected for discs like Liam O’Flynn’s must be higher than a solo piper known largely to the cognoscenti. Being able to cross over sales to those wanting light classical music, or new agey stuff (as Davey Spillane did) will increase sales greatly. Get your music on a TV or movie soundtrack and you have another much larger selling album that otherwise as people who would not go looking for a piping album.
As an aside the Scottish group The Red Hot Chilli Pipers have probably outsold most top rated pipe bands, or folk groups including pipes. They have managed to get themselves quite a high profile for a piping group. On one of their first visits to the US they “gatecrashed” the Today show on NBC following a suggestion from the doorman at their hotel. They just turned up in kilts in the crowd that waits outside the studios, were spotted and asked to play. That morning I found all the copies of their CD listed on Amazon sold…It is not how good you are within the piping world, or how many pipers are desperate to get a recording of you but how you can market yourself to the common punter that will determine high selling recordings.
Ian
& all this is, only for as long as sales of physical CD’s last. The cliff is in sight and here it is: my most recent payment was a whopping $0.002 US for a single streaming mp3. Those that set these rates are actively lobbying Federal regulators for even lower ones; as they simultaneously rake in profit from licensing their apps, futures investments, and ad fees.
Users of streaming services might think, “Great I can get all these tunes for one low price, the app has it all sorted…” yes, the app certainly does.
I dunno, Chas. Ever since the mainframe gnomes in the white coats lost control over dumb terminal users with personal computing, corporate interests have been trying to wrest it back - from thin clients to rentable apps to cloud computing. I’m waiting for the backlash as more younger people, both producers and users, rediscover the history and demand physical control of their stuff. And physical media have a part to play in that.
Then again, I’m also waiting for our new unicorn overlords to bring us rainbows and flowers.
joanie madden’s Wikipedia page says she sold 100,000s of copies of ‘song of the irish whistle’
that’s pretty amazing - I’d have thought with those sorts of sales she might have gotten into the main charts
CD sales are very fickle these days. People usually just buy them at shows so you have to do a lot of shows during the year to sell them. Of course almost everyone reading this post is a musician and we might buy more cd’s than the regular person so our thinking is a little obscured.
The piper that can afford to hire an orchestra or lots of guests musicians usually has a record label funding the CD and will also have a big promotional budget too to advertise the CD and the concerts where the album will, hopefully, be sold.
I’d have thought with those sorts of sales she might have gotten into the main charts
It would be No 1 for a month if they were all sold in a the same week and in record shops. Billboard doesn’t count sales at music venues unless you have a registered tour merchandise agent. Those guys usually only work big rock/pop/country acts, musicals, etc where you move 500+ cd’s per night.
Tommy
And actually with mainstream CD sales dropping bigger folk releases are hitting the main charts, not necessarily in high positions, but easily competitive with other mainstream stuff none of us have ever heard of. There have been a fair few English & Scottish acts that have hit the UK chart in the last year or two.
As a very rough idea it takes a few thousand CDs to be a minimally worthwhile project for a label. With the rise in home production and DIY labels that number is dropping for those with the skills to cut out the middlemen.