The big story in the music press this week is that album sales in America have declined to such an extent that there has been any platinum selling albums this year. 

The suggestion is that artists need to move away from the album being a primary source of revenue generation to more of a marketing opportunity for the rest of your money making activities.  The only problem with that is that smaller independent artists rely on album profits as a large portion of their revenues.  This isn’t the case with larger artists who have syncs, greater PRS income, sponsorship etc.  So, if albums are selling less, and you still need an income what should you do?  Here are are three suggestions:

• Use crowdfunding to raise money for the project and promote the release effectively preselling before launch.
• Once released upsell with t-shirt or concert ticket bundles creating greater value and income from smaller sales numbers.
• Place the albums at the end of a campaign of singles rather than at the start as discussed in this earlier blog post thus maximising overall exposure for the content within