Last month I anticipated a big drop in sales, “perhaps by as much as half.” I hate to admit it, but I told me so! May income totaled $315, versus $883 in April. Subtracting out sales from the EP, t-shirts, and download-only exclusives leaves $212 in actual album sales. My latest, The Thought Chapter, sold the best, with a few Depeche Mode tribute sales. The rest were scraps from single track downloads and streams. Something Beautiful, my costly all-acoustic album, didn’t earn a penny. I don’t know that I’ll ever break even on that one!
It’s actually not quite as bad as it looks. I was just shy of the $100 threshold for a CD Baby payment. Perhaps June sales will be slightly better, but if not, I may just start reporting quarterly rather than monthly figures!
That brings the total of physical CDs I’ve sold or otherwise parted with to 5,310. For more details, see my running tally of profit/loss figures for each album.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually, that fits right into the pattern everybody else is seeing.
From the standpoint of a store, a new release sells “hot” for about 3-4 weeks, then drops to a trickle. That’s the pattern these days. The few people who are into buying CD’s jump on it as a new release. Then unless there is something else happening to create momentum, the party is over. I even see that with new releases from bands like Apoptygma Berzerk, Camouflage, VNV Nation, you name it. The physical sales window is very short now. Digital may keep the pace up a bit longer, but creating some kind of lasting momentum is tough. Freebee digital saturation stunts the fight for momentum.
I think you’ll generally see a great first month or two from physical sales, then it will look like a drop for a month or so, and then you’ll start to see payments for those early digital download sales (takes a while to get through the payment chain) so it will go up again, and then drop to a steady trickle.
The way I see it, the only way to create a momentum that can keep sales more “steady” is to keep a steady chain of new releases. That turns everything into a discussion of format and pace.
-Todd
As recently as two years ago, I took in $600/month consistently, with little promotion (since I had nothing new to promote). Hopefully I’ll see another little bump when Second Thoughts digital sales filter through to me. While I’d like to at least break even, I can’t complain – I’ve got an audience and the freedom to do what I want. Maybe the money will follow, maybe not.