At Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 06:18:05 Michael Coxe wrote:

>Proof that a lower price will help the sales of an album. In Bestbuy it was 
>5.99, any other store I saw >it in, it was selling for 9.99.

This almost seems like a no brainer and yet it's taken one label to realize 
that a system that was in place back in the vinyl days STILL WORKS!! Duh!

A friend of mine had a band who was signed to CBS in the early '80s. CBS was 
just starting to delve into homegrown Canadian talent and the US head-office 
got nervous about putting too much money into domestic Canadian talent right 
out of the box, so the record was cut at a paltry sum of $38,000. They cut 
the members a reduced royalty deal in exchange for a more affordable retail 
cost bringing the price of the debut album down from $9.99 to $6.97. A 
single was issued which went Top20 and the album spiked at 250,000 units. 
Knowing the track history of Canadian album debuts before and since (usually 
25,000 to 50,000 is considered a success!).

The budget for the second album was doubled. This album retailed at regular 
price and the album STILL sold 250,000 units. But CBS's contention was that 
because the album's budget was doubled, the SALES should have doubled -- not 
taking into account for a single second that they were raking in $3.03 MORE 
per unit the second time around. The band was promptly dropped.

The band was called The Tenants. Never heard of them? Well, this is why.....

Jaimie Vernon,
Bullseye

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