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Going Gaga
Grammys Go Gaga, via
WSJ.
"Lady Gaga's towering digital sales, almost all of them iTunes
downloads, only tell part of the story. In fact, much of Gaga's
audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to
free streams—by the hundreds of millions—on YouTube and the other
online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm
BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By
contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite
scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009. A difference (among many)
between Gaga and the dowdy Scotswoman discovered on a British talent
show: Ms. Boyle's material, including "Amazing Grace," was
traditional—and so were most of her buyers. Some 97% of her albums were
sold on compact disc.
That
tells you how pronounced the generational divide is," says BigChampagne
founder Eric Garland. When it comes to the free streams that dwarf her
still-impressive sales, Gaga isn't giving it away for nothing—musicians
typically earn fractions of a penny each time a song is streamed on
Yahoo, for instance. While most artists stand to profit more from
high-margin CD sales, being embedded across the Web can pay dividends
in exposure and the loyalty of fans."
2 comments:
My guess is that the publicity will drive ticket sales, and that's big money. one sell-out crowd at a big arena is 20,000 tickets, and assuming $50 average seats, that's a cool million for one night. Her cut is probably going to be much heftier than what she would make on the equivalent income from CD sales.
...and, man, she had the privilege of singing and playing the piano with Sir Elton John, how cool is that?! Go Gaga!
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