What Factors Could Affect Your First Album Sales?

There are two pieces of information that could possibly help us to determine album sales. They are:

a) Historical figures - what was the level of sales in the previous years.

b) Top sales figures - how many copies did the leading albums record.

The above allows us to determine a realistic projection upon which we can confidently create a plan. The answer to the question can be found if we discuss the factors that should determine the cost of the first album:

Potential Sales - How many albums are you hoping to sell? How can this be known? You can know this by taking orders from the record stores you know and then projecting across the number of shops within the targeted territory.

So if your focus group thinks you can sell 50 copies and there are 1,000 similar stores that you can sell to directly, then potentially you can sell 50,000 copies. (The Billboards count shows there are limits to album sales.) What is a focus group? -A focus group is a group of close friends who work within the industry that can give you unbiased opinions, guidance, and criticism about your recordings. The object of their critique is to provide improvements that will make your recordings sellable and more appealing to your niche. Your focus group must include DJ's, record stores and some promoters who are knowledgeable about your niche.

Number of fans - In October 2007 Radiohead released the acclaimed album that created the music business model. The website is said to have had 1.2million visits and less than half of the visitors paying $6 for the album. The average is just over $2 for each visit.

Unless you are like Radiohead, visits to your website will be a lot less popular with visitors so the only way around this is to ensure you have a process for acquiring more fans into your database. It is especially important that when you play gigs you need to generate as many names, emails, and phone numbers of those who come to tell you how great you are. People lives are so hectic that you cannot rely on them chasing you to find out more about you and your gigs or tracks available. You need to build better relationships with the fans to ensure future sales.

Costs involved -Using the Thriller album concept, the label made $650million (if we assume the label made $5 for every album) Remember this is an astronomical hit record. Only a few will even sell a million copies (10 out of 150,000 in the USA).

The point to consider is that if all you're hoping to sell is 1000 albums at ?5, the total you hope to make from record sales only is ?5,000 then your recording costs would be between ?500 - ?1,000 maximum. This conservative estimate gives you a small room for profit. If on the other hand you can sell 5,000 units at ?5 then the total income you can expect is ?25,000 on record sale and your costs should be between ?2500 - ?5000. This is a rough estimate and you can project other expected sales along the same lines.

Do you want to learn more about making money with your music? If so, download my brand new free 5 week music business training course here: http://www.musicbusinesstools.com/

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You Could Make More Money Writing and Playing Commercial Jingles

Indeed, I must say I applaud all the garage startup bands of all the teenagers across this great nation who'd like to break into the music industry. As an entrepreneur it makes me smile, as I see they are serious, and they all have big dreams of becoming big-name musicians or rock stars. It is that energy, and way of thinking that makes America great.

Of course just like every little league baseball player will not grow up to be a major league baseball player, some of them will. Statistically yes, the odds are stacked against them, but you can't tell that to a group of teenagers who are pursuing their dream, and we all know you have to believe to achieve. Still, many of these young guitarists, drummers, and vocalists don't realize that they could actually make more money, and have a much better chance for success writing, playing, and producing commercial jingles for corporations.

In fact, the way it stands now with all the small businesses operating online, and all the multimedia content online, every business, big and small needs a commercial jingle to go along with their marketing and branding. They all need professionally done YouTube videos to put onto their website because we live in the information age and people wish to be entertained, and the businesses which can deliver that, will be pleased to see the consumers and customers responding with purchases - especially this new generation.

Interestingly enough, I was at Starbucks last year and I talked to a couple of teenagers who were sitting outside with their guitars and they had a small band, and I told them that they should write commercial jingles and go selling business to business offering to record something trendy and cool for each company owner. I later saw them a few weeks ago, well, at least two of the members of that band, and I guess there'd been some changeover so there were new people involved now, but those two thanked me for the advice, and had actually made a few thousand dollars writing jingles for local companies in our area.

Now then, with that money they were able to buy better equipment, recording studio time, and some electronics; synthesizing equipment to help with their future music projects. Okay so, they are still working on cutting a second CD and signing with a second level music label, and I'm sure that day will come because these kids are serious.

However, they also know they need to make money in the meantime, and they know there are lots of companies that need commercial jingles, until they can totally break into the big time and/or can perhaps sell a commercial jingle to a major corporation for some real money. Indeed, it is my sincere hope you will please consider all this and think on it. Don't ever give up on your dream, but consider other ways to make money while chasing it. Please think on this.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.worldthinktank.net/ - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

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