Comments on: Selling CD’s ?

By: Kyle Boreing

Kyle Boreing — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:27:40 +0000

One group I used to sing with ordered 1000 copies of a project about a year before I joined. I was with them for 7 months. When I left the group, they still hadn’t sold through 1000 copies, and this was two years after they were ordered. That’s an average of roughly 9 CD’s sold a weekend. If we played two shows a weekend, that’s 4-5 CD’s per show. We also gave away at least 2-3 CD’s per show to the church’s pastor, and the occasional “under-privileged” concert goer, so on average, we sold 2 or 3 CD’s per show.

Now granted, we didn’t work every weekend, so that average goes up, but even if we worked 40 weeks out of the year, that’s still an average of about 6 CD’s either sold or given away per show. At a cost of $15 per CD, that’s $90 total on product sales. As a group member, I was entitled to 5% of product sales, so that means I averaged $4.50 per weekend on CD sales. I can’t even buy a tie on that!!

As for covering costs, in a year, we averaged $7500 from product sales. That’s a little more than half of total production costs. That means it takes roughly two years to recoup the money spent on a project before we ever make a profit. If we are depending on CD sales to help pay for our next project, then we’ll be waiting three years (at least) between projects. Anyone even vaguely familiar with SG knows that a LOT of changes can occur in three years time….

By: John

John — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:13:31 +0000

At one time in my life, I bought a large number of CD’s. I had a very large collection, almost all of them SG. But now days, I buy less than one a year. I just do not have the interest. I also do not have the time to listen to them, as I now have 3 kids under the age of 6.

There are many things now days that ask for our attention. Many of us spend many, many hours surfing the net, and for me at least, I do not listen to music while I surf, as my ADD would make it pointless. Also, I suppose in most homes, watching TV has long since replaced listening to music.

I suppose most music today is listened to while driving, and now we have XM and Sirius to make it even less likely for some to make a CD purchase.

By: editor

editor — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:48:20 +0000

Used to be a kinda rule of thumb that we (SG) accounted for maybe .3% of total U.S. sales…that would be about 180. I would have little faith in that number. I would be much more curious about how many titles sold over, say, 30k. We used to have a LOT of those.
The main point here is for once SG is NOT BEHIND other genres–no sir, we are descending right along with the rest.
Where we ARE behind is:
1) in the awareness (or admission) that his is happening,
2) the reluctance to learn and use new marketing techniques and concepts that are working in other areas outside ours, and
3) creating music and events that are so compelling that people will choose to purchase our products over other choices they have.

By: Daniel J. Mount

Daniel J. Mount — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:28:20 +0000

(Oh, and Mickey – I’m just curious about your best guess.)

By: Daniel J. Mount

Daniel J. Mount — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:21:31 +0000

And how many of those 6,000 that sold over 1,000 units were Southern Gospel CDs?

Fifteen? Twenty-five? I doubt it would be much above that, but I would love to be wrong.