Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

[VitaminG]

Re: Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

I just pulled 25% out of the air for the sake of comparison (hence the "f.e"). I know 25% is WAY high for gold record status. Here in Australia, it's 35,000 units for gold and 75,000 for platinum. That's obviously nowhere near 25% of Australia's 18.5 million people.

My point was only that getting a gold record is still quite an achievement in whatever market you're in. Gold represents a large portion of the buying public in that particular market.

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

Originally posted by VitaminG:
I just pulled 25% out of the air for the sake of comparison (hence the "f.e"). I know 25% is WAY high for gold record status. Here in Australia, it's 35,000 units for gold and 75,000 for platinum. That's obviously nowhere near 25% of Australia's 18.5 million people.

My point was only that getting a gold record is still quite an achievement in whatever market you're in. Gold represents a large portion of the buying public in that particular market.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well in OZ for example, 35,000 divided by
18,500,000 comes to 0.0019, which is 19/100 of one percent - under 1/5 of 1%.
that's not that large a portion of the buying market. The percentage is about the same as in the US though, adjusted for population.

I couldn't find the number of sales for a gold record in Finland, but found their
population is a bit over 5,194,000 - less
than I thought, and about 28% that of Australia. For simplicity's sake I take
35,000 x 28% = 9,800. So if all is done
to scale,a gld record in Finland is less than 10,000 units sold. Feel free to correct me, as I'm estimating and would like to know the real figures.

My point is only that a Finnish gold-record selling artist might not sell
enough records to make a living even being a "gold" artist. I'm not knocking
their achievement, I'm just saying that a plumber in Finland needs about the same #
of customers as one in the US does to make a decent living. You don't say, "A
USA plumber needs 600 customrs per year to ake a living, but in Finland the same % is only 24 people, so we'll make every plumber live on only 24 customers! You would soon have no running water or toilets that way! The varying gold record standards for each country would make you think "oh, they're gold, they must be making a good living", when in reality they may not be making enough to survive on. The statistic becomes misleading in that it paints a brighter picture of their careers than may really be the case. That is all I'm trying to say, and hope this is a clear enough explanation for anyone to understand.

[Geir]

Re: Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

Glad we finally agree [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Ael]

Re: Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

I guess I was supposed to find out what's needed for a gold record in Finland - obviously [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

It's 20,000 for gold and 40,000 for platinum.

In Finland CoB's albums have all (maybe?) sold gold and their singles a few platinum if I remember correctly. And then sales abroad on top of this... I don't know exact figures - record companies don't seem to be very open about this. So I'm not going to guess.

I also found out that the artist gets perhaps $ 0.5-0.7 for every record sold in Finland and perhaps half of that for sales elsewhere. This heavily depends on the contract they have made , but I'd say theirs isn't the worst. The article about this subject was quite complicated - but the point was that the amont of money the artists get ( in Finland ) varies hugely depending on various matters: contract , advertising , time , etc. ). But an estimate was that if a band would sell 100.000 records ( doesn't happen very often ) imported, they'd get around $ 50.000. And this would be divided by 5 in case of CoB.

Doesn't seem that they're getting rich selling records - of course this makes touring possible, but I have no idea if that pays well for the artists. Someone must be making $$ there as well. Ok, now I'm sure I'm not going to be a 'rock star' but would rather finish my Master's degree in electronics and just play the guitar for fun [img]graemlins/poke.gif[/img]

[ January 28, 2003, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: Ael ]

[lerxstcat]

Re: Alexi Laiho Quote from the Old Board?

Thanks for the good information, Ael! Yeah, it seems the record companies like
to keep much of this info to themselves.
I know there's a controversy in the US over record companies claiming an artist
to be platinum because they SHIPPED a million units to stores, but Soundscan
might show they only SOLD 800,000 which
would mean their SALES really AREN'T platinum. The music biz doesn't like this info getting out.

You're wise to pursue your degree; there
was a famous VH1 Behind The Music on the
group TLC. They sold 10 million records
and had to declare bankruptcy! Their share of sales didn't cover the advances
they got to record, make videos, promote
the record and live, so they were broke
on sales of 10 million! Probably an extreme case, but still looks like rock stardom isn't quite the pot of gold we want to think it is!