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In an article about how tough it is to be rich and successful, there's actually an interesting nugget of info about the music business (albeit from an Austrailian perspective):
It's no secret that it's hard to reach the level of fame that both [Britney] Spears and [Vine's singer Craig] Nicholls have achieved.
There were 12,465 debut releases in the US last year, Sydney-based music industry analyst Phil Tripp said. Out of those albums, only 21 recouped their budget.
"To put it in perspective, last year in America, 24 people were killed by lightning," Tripp said.
In other words, the musical fairytale is true. It's almost miraculous when a local artist makes it to the top globally, let alone a singer from the US.
More from Simon, who was first on this one:
Posted by Casper at June 6, 2004 11:56 PMSydney based music industry analyst Phil Tripp attempts to contextualise this by saying "last year in America, 24 people were killed by lightning" - but this is a rubbish comparison; he's clearly trying to suggest that having an album that recoups is even less likely than being smote by lightning, but 24 people out of the entire population of America is a much, much lower incidence than 21 out of 12,465. In addition, of course, much of the wasted budget would have been pissed up against a wall by the clueless marketing departments of the music companies; and while being hit by lightning tends to give you an instant result, debut albums have much more than a twelve month period to make their money in. We've heard rumours that The Beatle's debut is still making money.