By
David D fro
m "Smoking Section"
Imagine a label that’s figured it all out.
Imagine the record execs sitting at a board meeting, looking at their financial numbers, in a panic over the state of the company and the music industry in general. The company’s Hip-Hop sales have struggled – a waning roster thinned out by incarcerations and mental breakdowns has crushed the label’s star power. No matter how much money they pump into a Hip-Hop album, and how many fans artist A seems to garner, the label can’t seem to get numbers above 100K.
The wheels start turning. Interests are piqued as executives realize if they can skim some money from artists’ outside endeavors then they can offset the disappointing album sales by scraping in the extra dough. The Internet isn’t earning them any money so it’s time to fully embrace the other multimedia avenues that have been under their noses forever. Consumer money is elastic but movies, TV shows and clothing companies have an unending pool of endorsement cash.
But how does this label tap into this money? Rappers are full of curse worse and their albums are unpredictable. If Rapper A sends the execs a 14-track album full of gritty bars, it won’t get any love from Jersey Shore. So the label starts a search, screening possible crossover hits with already-finished hooks from soft R&B artists backed by xylophones and synths. Perhaps the label even shops the skeletal track to movies looking for songs for its preview. Or they pitch it towards TV shows looking for a track to play during the dramatic monologue of the pilot episode before the rapper even lays a vocal down. Once Sponsor A bites, the label zips the song to the rapper and demands that he made the track his next single regardless of how it gibes with the rest of his album or his library to date. F*ck his loyal fanbase. They don’t buy albums anyway.
The album, full of sponsorship-ready tunes, is released. The singles have already reached top spots on the charts and are in every commercial on television, so they’re primed to score hundreds of thousands of units in its first week. But even if it doesn’t, the label is swimming in extra revenue from the cross-promotions even if an artist didn’t sign a 360 deal. Additionally, you better believe the label is working contracts that offer guarantee at least some of the bread from advertising. It’s a win/win for the label. That’s how the record label has combated the shrinking album sales.
And that seems to be how Atlantic Records has decided to go about business.
