The Table Sales Mentality
At the Blogger Conference, we talked about how artists tend to focus on table sales and not retail, even though retail accounts for 60% to 70% of their total unit sales.
Since the conference, I’ve wondered why this is the case. Perhaps it is because many contracts are worded such that the artists only starts getting album royalties once costs are recouped. Since albums cost quite a bit to produce, there may be cases where an album does not break even, costs are never recouped, and thus the artist never sees money from retail sales.
Now artists undoubtedly want their album to sell as many copies as possible in a retail setting. But if 75% to 100% of their money from a project comes from table sales, then I can see how they would focus on that.
