Jazz Odyssey

Our head of sales here pointed out that new Jack Johnson album sold 23,848 via download this past week (as a comparison, 50 Cent did 6,661). This represents 10.4% of the total first week album sales–the highest percentage of digital business I’ve seen on a major artist. What’s especially notable is that it isn’t due to some over-the-top new media initiative or a wealth of exclusives to drive sales. What we’re seeing here is digital music Darwinism–the evolution of the Jack Johnson fan demographic has grown more digitally oriented since Johnson’s last album, and their consumption habits are reflected accordingly in this sales breakdown.

This is huge and I’m surprised that more isn’t being made of it. Significant digital sales as a percentage of overall sales of a given album are going to become more frequent occurrences, and this will help elevate the possibility of some newer methods of releasing music as opposed to the current major label standard:

• Step 1: Release a single (usually with expensive radio and video campaign)
• Step 2: Release the album (with expensive P&P campaign at retail, and expensive consumer advertising campaign)
• Step 3: Continue to release singles while the artist tours relentlessly, milking the album as long as possible which results in a time between new releases of 2-3 years.

While there are a handful of multi-platinum exceptions, for the most part the Long Tail revenue from album sales in this model pale in comparison to what the artist will make in tickets and merchandise, which doesn’t exactly provide a compelling financial incentive for the artist to get off the road and record another album (not to mention that the label rarely shares in ticket and merch revenue streams). And fans eager to hear new material often have a long wait for new music–in the current model, once a CD is sold to a fan as the next
revenue opportunity for the label from that artist isn’t until their next CD which
could be years away.

Perhaps the growth in acceptance of digital as a music format could spawn a new scenario: the ability to release smaller units of music on a more frequent basis (without always having to resort to expensive single and video campaigns), which in turn could lay the groundwork for new tour and merchandise strategies. More music gets to more fans more quickly–everybody wins.

Finally, let’s hope the RIAA will soon issue an official policy that counts full digital album sales towards gold/platinum certifications…it would go a long way towards changing the label mindset of segregating digital sales from physical sales….