Most of us remember where we were the day Lennon died. And the day Freddie left us. And Kurt. And Stevie. (And for me, Alex Harvey, John Entwhistle and John Bonham).
I have pretty much the same memory of all of those days. Growing up in the World of selling music does that to you. You're quite devastated by the news of one of the greats leaving the coil, but you're also thinking about how you can fulfill your business obligation, and sell, sell, sell. As my old Guv, John T, used to say, "Time to rack 'em up".
And so you'd be begging the label, placing orders, transferring inventory, buying from "one stops", bartering windows and promising the World just to get hold of whatever stock you could. It was panic stations. Because the labels could rarely predict when an act would shuffle off, and so product had to be manufactured and distributed while the passing was still present in the media. And all the while, you were thinking, "how long will the sad news turn into sales"? Because, while it was bad news not to be able to offer a "Best Of" by the recently deceased, it was potentially worse to have 23,000 copies of Queen's "Hot Space" sitting in the back room, if someone on the team screwed up.
I went through this in the UK and the US for over 20 years. And they said that running music stores was easy. Yeah, right.
Michael Jackson sold 1.1 MILLION albums in the second week after his death. Not only that but this was a 37% increase on the 800,000 he sold the previous week. Sales went up! Now there's a rarity.
This is a first. While the media would have us think that it's because he's the undisputed King of Pop even after popping his clogs, it's because he's the first top flight artist to die in the digital age. There are three reasons why this is important.
For the first time, inventory is inexhaustible. It's impossible to run out. Or to overstock.
And then there's the viral component. Who do you think has been buying MJ's catalog? Well, clearly they are iTunes users, and probably didn't already have Thriller. So I believe that a large proportion has to be Millennials, today's texting, Twittering networkers. And it's kids. Young kids. I've heard stories of 6 year olds buying Thriller in the last couple of weeks. Which has got to be good. Although it will make for duller bar conversations in 10 years time.....Q:"what was the first album you bought?" A: "Thriller" when I was 6!" Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.
Finally, the media has stuck with the MJ story for nearly a month. That's incredible! What happened to it's interest in Swine Flu or even the Iranian protests? It shows how shallow our media is, but it also demonstrates that it can still have a huge impact on music sales. And most importantly, it shows that music is still very important in people's lives, whether or not the artist is still of our World.
Is there a job creation opportunity here for the industry? Perhaps labels should think about employing some Reaper-esque backroom boys to plan how best to leverage the inevitable passings of Macca, The Boss, Madge and Bono?
Posts
