"But it ain't what you cop, it's about what you keep..." ~Lauryn Hill
Reviewing the consumption on Meek Mill's "Going Bad", Michael Jackson's Thriller at 40, Mariah Carey's holiday run and Rich The Kid's score.
Over the past several years, Meek Mill has shared his grievances with Atlantic Records publicly.
The issues include the timing of releases, blocking signings and coming in between relationships, the amount of money Meek’s made Atlantic versus what he receives, and also what gets counted as a project.
There is no doubt that Meek is an incredible artist who has generated lots of money for Atlantic, but to get a better idea of how much money that might be, I decided to do a little analysis.
Let’s take a look at the song “Going Bad” featuring Drake.
According to the RIAA, the song is 5x platinum.
Additionally, Luminate is showing (as of 11/23/22) that from a performance level the song has achieved the following:
1.4 Billion Streams
230k Digital Track Sales
8.5M Songs with SES On-Demand
Big song! Let’s now try to apply some calculations to figure out what “Going Bad” might have generated from a revenue perspective.
Like most songs, the majority of the streams come from Apple and Spotify.
Utilizing approximate streaming rates from all of the DSP’s, the revenue generated from the audio streaming portion of the song is in the ballpark of $6.7M.
The large majority of the video views come from Youtube which puts the video streaming portion of the song in the ballpark of $500k.
Factor in another $210k for digital tracks.
That brings us to a total of $7.4M.
Yes, there are some things that could swing the revenue up higher. Maybe some sizable synchs, world-wide sales that Luminate didn’t capture, some D2C sales that weren’t factored in, etc.
These things could all be true, but directionally speaking, it most likely wouldn’t be enough to get the revenue anywhere near $24M. Nonetheless, incredible results for that song.
One of the things that Meek called out in his grievances is his royalty rate and that he’s just receiving pennies. While that is true for many artists, one artist that it was not true for was Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out 40 years ago today.
While the album is reported to be the best selling album world-wide, what’s equally interesting is the work that was done behind the scenes by Jackson’s lawyer and advisor, John Branca.
As esteemed journalist and author Zach O’Malley Greenburg shares in his book Michael Jackson, Inc. and in this article he crafted for Forbes, Jackson earned a royalty around $2 per album. From the article:
”One of Jackson's best business habits was to keep shrewd advisers around him. Perhaps the best example is superstar entertainment attorney John Branca, who negotiated many lucrative deals for Jackson and has done a remarkable job with the singer's estate thus far. Many praise Jackson for bringing in Quincy Jones to work on Thriller, but it was Branca who scored the industry-leading royalty rate that The Gloved One enjoyed at the time (nearly $2 per album sold), allowing him to reap untold profits from what turned out to be the best-selling album of all time.”
Wow.
The Guinness Book of World Records has the album listed at: 67M
RIAA has the album certified at: 34M
A press release put out by Sony Music to celebrate the 40th anniversary has the album at: 100M+
For more about the business savvy of Jackson + Branca, I would recommend O’Malley Greenburg’s book on MJ.
It’s also a big time of year for Mariah Carey.
The songstress created a cash cow 27 years ago when she teamed with hit producer, Walter Afanasieff to create “All I Want for Christmas Is You” from her album, Merry Christmas.
The song is a monster:
Here is a look at sales of the single for just the last 5 years:
2021: 1,746,717
2020: 1,688,150
2019: 1,964,927
2018: 1,314,451
2017: 1,113,799
8M in sales in just the last 5 years is incredible, but that’s not the story.
The story is two-fold.
The album “Merry Christmas” and the song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” are both only relevant for 8 weeks out of the year.
To emphasize this point, let’s take a look at Google Trends over a five year period.
Every year the song sees an uptick after Halloween and almost flatlines by the new year.
So just how successful is this project considering its limited seasonality?
Pulling data from Luminate we can infer the following:
97,489 Vinyl x $22.99 = $2,241,272
4,162,978 CD’s x $14.99 = $62,403,040
312,660 Digital Albums x $11.99 = $3,748,793
1,247,678 Cassettes x $12.99 = $16,207,337
5,279,231 Digital Songs x $.99 = $5,226,438
2,311,945,328 On-Demand Streams = $8,481,642
Total = $98,308,522 estimated revenue generated from sales since 1994
Mind you, these are conservative figures that have nothing to do with Apple TV specials or McDonald’s promotions, which surely, Mariah was paid well for.
On the topic of being well paid…
Rich The Kid shares that he signed a new deal with RCA worth $40M!
Here is the TMZ video where Rich shares the news.
That’s a very handsome sum of money.
Let’s do some quick back of the napkin math to see how this might add up.
To date, Rich The Kid has generated:
2.8 Billion Streams
Moved 1,579,239 Albums w/TEA w/SEA On-Demand
5,275 Physical = $63,247
17,370 Digital = $173,700
1,895,054,338 Audio Streams = $9,096,639
874,926,161 Video Streams = $1,434,878
Total = $10,768,464 estimated revenue generated from Rich The Kid’s solo work
Merry Christmas to Rich!
In the coming weeks…
Hov, a look at the past decade, and Lil Baby…
Feedback…
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