"If y'all ain't talking 'bout large money what's the point?" ~ JAY-Z
Taylor Swift's estimated $27M in first week revenue 💰, the top first week sales ever, the top 20 artists last week by 💵 from audio streams & Yo Gotti's empire 🚀
There’s been no shortage of coverage on Taylor Swift’s historic latest album, Midnights, and the success that it has already achieved. Midnights marks the fifth time that Swift has sold over 1M albums first week and the first time that a female artist has occupied the top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. Additionally, it’s her 11th consecutive album to top the Billboard 200.
How is she able to achieve these results? As former CEO of Ticketmaster Nathan Hubbard puts it so eloquently, “she really in this case used new tactics to achieve older benchmarks of success.”
That includes finding authentic and creative ways to partner with the DSP’s, social media platforms, retailers, radio and television, which in turn led to the biggest first week of sales in music for an album since Adele’s 25 in 2015.
Now let’s breakdown the sales by configuration and put together some ballpark figures on what Midnights may have generated in first week revenue before the money is split up amongst the various stakeholders. Mind you, this has nothing to do with merch sales and her recently announced new tour.
575,000 Vinyl x $29.99 = $17,244,250
395,000 CD’s x $12.99 = $5,131,050
549,000,000 Streams = $2,909,557
161,000 Digital Downloads x $11.99 = $1,930,390
10,000 Cassettes x $17.99 = $179,900
Total Estimated Revenue Generated First Week From Music = $27,395,147
In an era where most artist’s sales come from Streaming Equivalent Albums (SEA), Taylor managed to move vinyl, CD’s and cassettes direct to consumer and it added significantly to her bottomline.
Looking at the different formats that contributed to her sales from a percentage standpoint shows just how much she was able to move physical product in a digital world.
Vinyl (36%)
CD’s (25%)
Cassettes (1% >)
Digital Downloads (10%)
Streams (28%)
This is especially interesting when we look at the list of the 23 albums that have sold over 1M units first week.
All of these albums relied on physical products to achieve the success that they garnered. At release, Adele’s 25 did not appear on DSP’s and was only made available for streaming 6+ months after it came out. To this day, Garth Brooks’ Double Live (as well as all of his other albums) isn’t available on Spotify. While Double Live has only sold a little over 6M copies, it was a double album that shipped 10.5M copies to retailers.
While it’s an archaic measure of success, it will be interesting to see when an artist is able to achieve 1M in first week sales from streaming.
Speaking of streams…
Here is a look at last week’s Top 20 Artists based on revenue from streaming audio.
No real surprises here but we should see a big spike in the coming week’s revenue generated from Drake’s music with his collaborative project with 21 Savage dropping this Friday.
Fingerprints
While there is a heightened awareness to what Yo Gotti is building with his Collective Music Group, I personally don’t feel like he’s gotten his just due.
In addition to himself, Gotti has 6 artists on his CMG label (Blac Youngsta, Moneybagg Yo, 42 Dugg, EST Gee, Mozzy, and Blocboy JB) with over 1 Billion streams and he’s showing no sides of slowing down with GloRilla, Lil Poppa, and Big Boogie.
Developing, breaking, and partnering with these acts has led to over 24 Billion streams and 17 Million albums sold (according to Luminate). Clearly Gotti has an eye for talent and a know-how for how to shine a light on them which makes him one of the best executives doing it.
In addition to building his music empire, he’s been diversifying his portfolio with an investment in eGaming company Faze Clan, joining the ownership group of soccer club, DC United, and executive producing the upcoming documentary The Invaders with Nas. Gotti also has expansive investments in real estate and food & beverage.
Some of his most important contributions might be the work he’s doing with Jay-Z + Team ROC to challenge the conditions at Parchman (the Mississippi State Penitentiary) which are completely inhumane.
Rewind
A tip from Paul McCartney may have cost Michael Jackson his friendship with Paul but in the process made him $750 Million Dollars.
Paul McCartney, a member of The Beatles, & Michael Jackson started becoming close in the late 70’s & early 80’s while collaborating on songs and being around each other in the music industry.
They ended up sharing lots of business advice and songwriting advice with each other.
This would turn out to be a bad choice on Paul’s end. After hearing how lucrative music publishing rights could be from Paul & after careful deliberation, in 1985 Michael Jackson bid on and bought ATV (Associated TeleVision), a famous British television broadcaster, for $47.5M.
The Beatles did not own all of their publishing at the time.
However, MJ had the funds & understood that there was real $$$ to be made off of publishing, and had his attorney John Branca bid on ATV.
Michael ended up in total owning 251 of the Beatles’ songs as well as 4,000 other songs and musical sound effects.
This included the songs, “Let it Be”, “Yesterday”, and “Hey Jude”, some of the Beatles most popular songs.
After being asked by Paul why he went behind his back & bid on his music, Michael allegedly responded with, “It’s just business, Paul.”
McCartney was not pleased. “I think it’s dodgy to do something like that,” he once said of the purchase. “To be someone’s friend, and then buy the rug they’re standing on.”
Here is a link to Paul describing his side of the story.
A decade after the initial deal, Jackson sold 50 percent of ATV to Sony for $95 million, creating the music publishing company Sony/ATV that today owns rights of not only Beatles songs but others from artists such as Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift, amongst others.
Following Jackson’s death, his estate agreed to sell the remaining 50% to SONY/ATV in 2016 for $750M.
As people ponder the best business moves made by entertainers, MJ’s purchase of ATV has to be near the top.
Soon Come
A look at what Michael Rubin and your favorite rappers have in common and a holistic look at the latest publishing deals.
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