Made in America. A profitable Album ?
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Made In America will probably never receive Gold certification-it was taken out-of-print in 2006,and total sales figures are probably just a few copies short of the 500,000 mark.
This has been a common scenario with many albums:an older album is finally taken out-of-print,and the total cumulative sales were 499,000+(or possibly something like 998,000+).An album could be only a few hundred(or a few thousand) copies short of the gold or platinum threshold-but unless it is reissued and sells consistently,the possibility of RIAA certification is basically lost.
This has been a common scenario with many albums:an older album is finally taken out-of-print,and the total cumulative sales were 499,000+(or possibly something like 998,000+).An album could be only a few hundred(or a few thousand) copies short of the gold or platinum threshold-but unless it is reissued and sells consistently,the possibility of RIAA certification is basically lost.
GaryAlan
Well-Known Member
Query:
In order to be deemed 'profitable',
how many copies of the album have to be sold?
Offering cost upwards of $50,000..and, Richard stated A&M lost money on the investment (at that time).
But, it was not only later re-packaged in the United States, it was re-packaged in UK.
Made In America, (probable) production costs around $100,000. (or, more).
No doubt, every Carpenters' album, by this time, is profitable--regardless of its RIAA Status.
Passage was moderately successful in Japan--Billboard November 19,1977 initial Orders exceed 150,000copies--
Britain, both Passage (Cert. BPI Gold/100,000copies) and Made In America (Cert. BPI Silver/60,000copies) did better on UK Charts.
In order to be deemed 'profitable',
how many copies of the album have to be sold?
Offering cost upwards of $50,000..and, Richard stated A&M lost money on the investment (at that time).
But, it was not only later re-packaged in the United States, it was re-packaged in UK.
Made In America, (probable) production costs around $100,000. (or, more).
No doubt, every Carpenters' album, by this time, is profitable--regardless of its RIAA Status.
Passage was moderately successful in Japan--Billboard November 19,1977 initial Orders exceed 150,000copies--
Britain, both Passage (Cert. BPI Gold/100,000copies) and Made In America (Cert. BPI Silver/60,000copies) did better on UK Charts.
CarpentersToYou
Somehow you brought the gambler out in me...
I became a fan at around the time LOVE SONGS was released. I remember having lots of trouble trying to get Ticket To Ride, Passage, and Made In America on CD. I found TTR on the Rebound Records cassette which was a very bright day for teenage me . Fortunately the announcement of the Remastered Classics Album came out and I remember going to Best Buy on that December day in 1998 to pick up my missing albums. I was so enchanted with them and the beautiful gold side tray. I remember before I saw them online from Japanese retailers but as a teenager there was no way I could thumb out the money for those few albums (but I had to for Live in Japan). Those were some good times.
It's very hard to say.... as you might know, record company accounting practices are full of twists and turns and weird "rules" and all sorts of legalities, to the point where just about any album could be shown to be a money loser if it serves the company's wishes.
Movie companies are the same way. I remember stories when "Forrest Gump" came out, and Tom Hanks was to receive a share of any 'profits.' The movie grossed something like half a billion dollars but Paramount was still somehow able to show that it was unprofitable and avoid paying him some of his percentage.
GaryAlan
Well-Known Member
Some perspective:
Page 82, On Record-Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Simon Frith,2000)
states that the " break-even point for album sales in late 1970's was approximately 100,000 copies sold."
This number reflects cost of production versus actual sales to consumers.
Made In America sold (at least) 60,000 copies in the UK (1981)
and, Adam, as you say, 10,000 copies in Japan (1981).
In USA, the album was at Billboard chart position #62 after eight weeks, and #52--its peak-- the previous week.
(Obviously, at that time, it had failed to 'go USA Gold'.)
Passage peaked at #49 USA, and fell short of Gold status, at that time.
Kind of Hush certified USA Gold, and peaked at chart #33 (In Japan 80,000, UK 100,000.....in need of citation)
Coleman (page 289):
"...Made In America joined the long list of records that were very profitable, both for A&M and for the Carpenters."
I suppose one could make the case that all Carpenters albums were profitable.
However, that, and the statement from Coleman, fail to paint an accurate reflection
of the historical (at the time of release) picture. (production and marketing costs, actual sales, returns.....etc.)
For instance, as we know from Richard Carpenter, Made In America was also the most expensive to produce. (Actual Cost Unknown ?).
LP The Singles 1974-1978 , A&M budgeted upwards of $550,000 plus for marketing, it went Platinum UK=300,000 copies.
As Alpert remarks: " The big joke in the Industry was shipping an album Gold, and it was returned Platinum." (A&M 25th Ann. Book)
" By 1979, A&M Records nearly went bankrupt." (page 138, Top 40 Democracy, Univ. Chicago Press 2014, Weisbard)
"Sales slumped 20% between 1979 and 1982" (ibid.,page 145)
"A&M found itself buried in returned product." (ibid.,page 145).
Now, who says this is all Black and White?
Page 82, On Record-Rock, Pop and the Written Word (Simon Frith,2000)
states that the " break-even point for album sales in late 1970's was approximately 100,000 copies sold."
This number reflects cost of production versus actual sales to consumers.
Made In America sold (at least) 60,000 copies in the UK (1981)
and, Adam, as you say, 10,000 copies in Japan (1981).
In USA, the album was at Billboard chart position #62 after eight weeks, and #52--its peak-- the previous week.
(Obviously, at that time, it had failed to 'go USA Gold'.)
Passage peaked at #49 USA, and fell short of Gold status, at that time.
Kind of Hush certified USA Gold, and peaked at chart #33 (In Japan 80,000, UK 100,000.....in need of citation)
Coleman (page 289):
"...Made In America joined the long list of records that were very profitable, both for A&M and for the Carpenters."
I suppose one could make the case that all Carpenters albums were profitable.
However, that, and the statement from Coleman, fail to paint an accurate reflection
of the historical (at the time of release) picture. (production and marketing costs, actual sales, returns.....etc.)
For instance, as we know from Richard Carpenter, Made In America was also the most expensive to produce. (Actual Cost Unknown ?).
LP The Singles 1974-1978 , A&M budgeted upwards of $550,000 plus for marketing, it went Platinum UK=300,000 copies.
As Alpert remarks: " The big joke in the Industry was shipping an album Gold, and it was returned Platinum." (A&M 25th Ann. Book)
" By 1979, A&M Records nearly went bankrupt." (page 138, Top 40 Democracy, Univ. Chicago Press 2014, Weisbard)
"Sales slumped 20% between 1979 and 1982" (ibid.,page 145)
"A&M found itself buried in returned product." (ibid.,page 145).
Now, who says this is all Black and White?
Geographer
Well-Known Member
Just using simple math: if MIA cost upwards of $500,000 to produce, and given that in 1981 (if memory serves me correctly) new releases sold in the $10-$12 range then MIA could have "broke even" at about 60,000 copies sold. I do remember somewhere (maybe on this site somewhere) it being stated that MIA sold a miserable 125,000 copies or so? Again, I'm just thinking out loud and not doing any deep research here; but if that is the case, then A&M made at least $1.2 million in sales minus the $500K to produce it. Or a "profit" of about $700,000. At a 7% royalty, K&R shared about $50,000 from sales. Not huge, but "profitable" nonetheless. Not sure what the retail store mark-up would have profited the stores, but I think you get the idea. This does not count the sales of singles such as "Touch Me" which would have just been icing on the cake, in a sense. Does this make sense?
I would imagine there are a number of other factors that would have further reduced the profit figures though. The dealer price of the album would have been around two-thirds of the retail price, so A&M would only have gotten the monies based on $6.60 per album sold if the retail price were $10. Plus there were all the marketing costs, which considering Karen and Richard travelled to Europe and South America to push the album must have been not inconsiderable.
They did record a lot of tracks for the album though (pretty much double what appeared on the released album), which would have clocked up the studio hours and it was a fairly slow album to produce - Richard spent the best part of a year on it. I imagine that burnt through a fair few dollars...
Jeff
Well-Known Member
regard ing the studio action of carpenters in and around 79 through 81 it seems interesting that money can be spent here and not there and there and not here I wonder who made the ultimate calls where to spend marketing vs recording too many tracks vs what tracks stay in vault even though there was a lot of money spent on them many questions from a person with many questions.
GaryAlan
Well-Known Member
As usual, Jeff, you have raised very interesting questions !
A glance at this album reveals:
Two Carpenter/Bettis Compositions....Those Good Old Dreams and Because We Are In Love (The wedding Song).
I Believe You.....recorded/tracked 1978,Riser arranged; the song being covered and charting, by Dorothy Moore , the previous year (see, Billboard).
Touch Me When We're Dancing.....it being covered by 'Bama, and charting, the previous year (see, Billboard)
Strength of A Woman....it being covered by Bonnie Raitt, Richard had heard the version.
Somebody's Been Lyin'......Sayer and Bacharach
When You've Got What It Takes...Roger Nichols
When It's Gone, Randy Handley....this one Karen and Richard got to first.
Want You Back In My Life Again, by Chris Christian...he was being promoted heavily around this time(see Billboard).
Beechwood 4-5789, a cover of the original Marvelettes.
Imagine if Karen had not intended to marry, would Richard and John have written a different song for the MIA album?
Would Look To Your Dreams been considered, at all, for this album?
As it is, they apparently did quite the 'rush' job on the song.....so, composer and lyricist were 'spinning their wheels'?
1978,1979,1980.....with so much time for song selection and new compositions, exactly what is it Richard Carpenter was 'doing'.
Strange how he claims (now) that the addiction messed him up as far as Hush, Passage, Portrait.....never this album, though.
A glance at this album reveals:
Two Carpenter/Bettis Compositions....Those Good Old Dreams and Because We Are In Love (The wedding Song).
I Believe You.....recorded/tracked 1978,Riser arranged; the song being covered and charting, by Dorothy Moore , the previous year (see, Billboard).
Touch Me When We're Dancing.....it being covered by 'Bama, and charting, the previous year (see, Billboard)
Strength of A Woman....it being covered by Bonnie Raitt, Richard had heard the version.
Somebody's Been Lyin'......Sayer and Bacharach
When You've Got What It Takes...Roger Nichols
When It's Gone, Randy Handley....this one Karen and Richard got to first.
Want You Back In My Life Again, by Chris Christian...he was being promoted heavily around this time(see Billboard).
Beechwood 4-5789, a cover of the original Marvelettes.
Imagine if Karen had not intended to marry, would Richard and John have written a different song for the MIA album?
Would Look To Your Dreams been considered, at all, for this album?
As it is, they apparently did quite the 'rush' job on the song.....so, composer and lyricist were 'spinning their wheels'?
1978,1979,1980.....with so much time for song selection and new compositions, exactly what is it Richard Carpenter was 'doing'.
Strange how he claims (now) that the addiction messed him up as far as Hush, Passage, Portrait.....never this album, though.
GaryAlan
Well-Known Member
LATimes, July 4th, 1988:
When an artist goes into a recording studio to cut an album, the money for the session is usually paid by a record company in the form of an advance against the artist's royalties on the eventual sale of the record.
The success of the studio business, therefore, is tied directly to the performance of the record industry at large. In recent years, that's meant hard times for studio operators.
For example, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the major record companies released 4,170 new albums in 1978. The following year, as the record industry began to feel the effects of declining sales, only 3,575 new albums were released. In 1980, the number fell to 3,000. By 1984, with the record industry in a full-blown depression, the number had dropped to 2,170--a decline of nearly 50% from just four years before.
In 1985, the number of new releases started inching upward again as the record industry began recovering from its slump.
The problem is, the recovery has been fueled largely by the sale of older records reissued on compact discs--records that don't require additional time at the recording studio. Last year, with record company profits at an all-time high, the major companies released only 2,406 new albums--still far below their output 10 years ago.
Making matters worse for the studios, belt-tightening by the record companies has reduced the average recording budget for an album from about $125,000 a few years ago to between $80,000 and $100,000 today, according to studio operators. And with home studios siphoning off recording time, studio operators estimate that their share of an average album's recording budget has fallen to between 50% and 60%.
In 1967, the Beatles' classic album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was recorded using what was then state-of-the-art studio technology--a four-track tape-recording machine. That meant that four different elements--vocals, guitars, drums and piano--were recorded separately and then combined on a single half-inch tape. In the ensuing 21 years, technological advances in sound recording have made four-track recording seem almost as primitive as, well, chiseling in stone.
Today, the state of the art is 48-track recording. For music lovers, the advances have meant better-sounding records; for studio operators, they've meant huge expenses. A 24-track recorder--considered the minimum for professional recording--can cost $25,000 to $90,000. A 32-track digital recorder costs about $140,000.
One studio operator estimates that to keep up with technology and remain competitive, a studio must completely upgrade its equipment "every 2 1/2 or three years--consoles, tape machines, new mikes, the whole schmear."
When Chris Stone opened his famous Record Plant studio in 1968, "fully equipped, including construction, right down to the floor tile, it cost $75,000," he said. "Today, that same room would cost $1.5 million."
Source:
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-04/business/fi-4019_1_recording-studio
When an artist goes into a recording studio to cut an album, the money for the session is usually paid by a record company in the form of an advance against the artist's royalties on the eventual sale of the record.
The success of the studio business, therefore, is tied directly to the performance of the record industry at large. In recent years, that's meant hard times for studio operators.
For example, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the major record companies released 4,170 new albums in 1978. The following year, as the record industry began to feel the effects of declining sales, only 3,575 new albums were released. In 1980, the number fell to 3,000. By 1984, with the record industry in a full-blown depression, the number had dropped to 2,170--a decline of nearly 50% from just four years before.
In 1985, the number of new releases started inching upward again as the record industry began recovering from its slump.
The problem is, the recovery has been fueled largely by the sale of older records reissued on compact discs--records that don't require additional time at the recording studio. Last year, with record company profits at an all-time high, the major companies released only 2,406 new albums--still far below their output 10 years ago.
Making matters worse for the studios, belt-tightening by the record companies has reduced the average recording budget for an album from about $125,000 a few years ago to between $80,000 and $100,000 today, according to studio operators. And with home studios siphoning off recording time, studio operators estimate that their share of an average album's recording budget has fallen to between 50% and 60%.
In 1967, the Beatles' classic album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was recorded using what was then state-of-the-art studio technology--a four-track tape-recording machine. That meant that four different elements--vocals, guitars, drums and piano--were recorded separately and then combined on a single half-inch tape. In the ensuing 21 years, technological advances in sound recording have made four-track recording seem almost as primitive as, well, chiseling in stone.
Today, the state of the art is 48-track recording. For music lovers, the advances have meant better-sounding records; for studio operators, they've meant huge expenses. A 24-track recorder--considered the minimum for professional recording--can cost $25,000 to $90,000. A 32-track digital recorder costs about $140,000.
One studio operator estimates that to keep up with technology and remain competitive, a studio must completely upgrade its equipment "every 2 1/2 or three years--consoles, tape machines, new mikes, the whole schmear."
When Chris Stone opened his famous Record Plant studio in 1968, "fully equipped, including construction, right down to the floor tile, it cost $75,000," he said. "Today, that same room would cost $1.5 million."
Source:
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-04/business/fi-4019_1_recording-studio
Vinylalbumcovers
Ah am so steel een luv weeth yoo
Your article, while making many salient points, is outdated. Home recording is now even better than it once was and 48 tracks is nowhere near the max anymore. One can now have infinite tracks on which to record. Pro Tools, Logic, associated gear, and most plugins have become affordable for virtually anyone so no need for a pro studio anymore.
In 1981, we were dealing with an analog 24-track max unless you used time code to connect two machines together which Richard might have done. Studios themselves were essential as the audio boards and take machines are far too bulky for the average home and great mics remain very expensive but this would have especially been the case then.
Ed
In 1981, we were dealing with an analog 24-track max unless you used time code to connect two machines together which Richard might have done. Studios themselves were essential as the audio boards and take machines are far too bulky for the average home and great mics remain very expensive but this would have especially been the case then.
Ed
GaryAlan
Well-Known Member
Yes, Ed, I understood that the newspaper article was outdated.
My intent was to try and locate an article,nearest, which would approximate the
conditions , financially--in particular--surrounding the 1981 album.
Obviously, technology was/and still is approximated by--Moore's Law-- which is the reason I
only highlighted (in bold) certain particulars.
In fact, I do not possess requisite knowledge of the recording technology,
then or now, which I could follow in any detail !
(Nor could I contribute to that facet of the discussion.)
Thanks for the input, though!
My intent was to try and locate an article,nearest, which would approximate the
conditions , financially--in particular--surrounding the 1981 album.
Obviously, technology was/and still is approximated by--Moore's Law-- which is the reason I
only highlighted (in bold) certain particulars.
In fact, I do not possess requisite knowledge of the recording technology,
then or now, which I could follow in any detail !
(Nor could I contribute to that facet of the discussion.)
Thanks for the input, though!
newvillefan
I Know My First Name Is Stephen
I think you can clearly separate the cost of recording an album into two parts. The cost of 'tracking' songs for potential selection on an album is probably fairly low...just the studio time, engineer and guitar/drums/piano/bass session musicians. Richard and Karen's time (piano and work leads) was probably free at this stage, since they're ultimately investing in their own product. In other words, how many of the songs not featured on MIA made it past the basic track to the most expensive phase i.e. multi-tracking of vocals, background choirs, scoring and orchestration and additional instrumentation overdubbing? I'd say not many outside of the 9 that reached the final album (not including 'I Believe You'). As Richard has said, only one song on Voice Of The Heart was finished, the rest required additional work to complete them in 1983 and most of those came from MIA sessions.
Vinylalbumcovers
Ah am so steel een luv weeth yoo
song4u
Well-Known Member
I remember the state of inflation in the U.S. being associated with the earlier 70's. The 80's were more associated in my mind with 'Reaganonics' and an emergence from inflation. But I was a kid in the early 70's so my recollection is of how tight my parents' budget was at that time. Being a young adult in the 80's, I recall we were not told to conserve resources all the time, like we were taught as school children, and people returned to more normal spending. I know I was thrilled when my parents were able to find the money for the occasional concert tickets.
That being said, I thought it odd that Passage wasn't the most expensive album, because of all of the extra musicians hired, and especially the huge production of Don't Cry for me Argentina.
(Sometimes I feel so old!)
MIA-total sales are approx.500,000 as of 1992-but the album only sold between 200,000-300,000 in 1981.
"Look To Your Dreams" was finished in 1978.
moog
Well-Known Member
I think we have to remember that the Coleman book understates what happened with Karen's solo album, and overstates what happened with Richard's and Made in America, sales-wise.
Harry, is there something on this site I'm missing that has the official sales records for each album with citations? Would be useful. A lot of numbers are thrown around.
Harry, is there something on this site I'm missing that has the official sales records for each album with citations? Would be useful. A lot of numbers are thrown around.
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