What kind of competition exists between albums? Sales wise?
May 24, 2016 2:00:42 GMT -5
Post by Sherane Lamar on May 24, 2016 2:00:42 GMT -5
In the box office, there's a lot of competition. Because there is a limited number of screens at each location forcing theater chains to limit the amount of time slots that they can give each movie. Because barely anybody is going to go to see two movies in one day if they are interested in both. And because often times people plan to go to the movies as an event without even deciding beforehand which movie to see. So essentially, consumers are constantly going to be asking themselves "which of these two movies should I see?".
So as a result, in the movie industry, there is a ton of concern over how close together two blockbusters are and never releasing two big movies on the same day unless there is "counter-programming" involved.
Now in the music industry, with album sales specifically, there doesn't seem to be nearly as much competition. There's no limit to how many albums can be sold at an outlet at a time. If you're the kind of person who still buys albums, their relatively cheap, so there's not much of a reason that you can't buy two on the same week. And nobody goes out saying "I really need to buy an album this week, I wonder what's new". So overall, barely anybody is going to be asking themselves "which of these two albums should I buy?" and more people will be asking themselves simply "should I buy this album?"
So that's why we don't see a lot of attention payed to how close "blockbuster" albums are to one another. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of competition regarding album sales. Kanye and 50 Cent opened the same week back in the day. One Direction and Justin Bieber opened the same day last year, followed by Adele the next week. Drake and Beyonce had two of this year's biggest openings back to back.
That's mostly just my own personal observations, based on what I know about economics and the music industry.
So my questions are,
1. How accurate are those first four paragraphs I wrote?
2. What difference would it make, if say, Rihanna had decided to release Anti 4 weeks after Adele rather than 9?
3. With album sales so relatively insignificant in today's industry, is competition from other albums enough to make artists want to massively change their albums release date (like by 2 months or something), or would that be nonsense because most of their money comes from tours and other ventures??
So as a result, in the movie industry, there is a ton of concern over how close together two blockbusters are and never releasing two big movies on the same day unless there is "counter-programming" involved.
Now in the music industry, with album sales specifically, there doesn't seem to be nearly as much competition. There's no limit to how many albums can be sold at an outlet at a time. If you're the kind of person who still buys albums, their relatively cheap, so there's not much of a reason that you can't buy two on the same week. And nobody goes out saying "I really need to buy an album this week, I wonder what's new". So overall, barely anybody is going to be asking themselves "which of these two albums should I buy?" and more people will be asking themselves simply "should I buy this album?"
So that's why we don't see a lot of attention payed to how close "blockbuster" albums are to one another. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of competition regarding album sales. Kanye and 50 Cent opened the same week back in the day. One Direction and Justin Bieber opened the same day last year, followed by Adele the next week. Drake and Beyonce had two of this year's biggest openings back to back.
That's mostly just my own personal observations, based on what I know about economics and the music industry.
So my questions are,
1. How accurate are those first four paragraphs I wrote?
2. What difference would it make, if say, Rihanna had decided to release Anti 4 weeks after Adele rather than 9?
3. With album sales so relatively insignificant in today's industry, is competition from other albums enough to make artists want to massively change their albums release date (like by 2 months or something), or would that be nonsense because most of their money comes from tours and other ventures??
