The Homa Files

Punch line: With internet piracy and digital song-sharing sites like Spotify, selling records is increasingly difficult.

Taylor Swift uses retail partners, traditional media and broad audience targeting to top the charts once again.

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Excerpted from WSJ’s, “Taylor Swift Album Fast Out Of Gate”

Taylor Swift’s “Red,”  is on track to sell more than one million copies in its first week in U.S. stores.

The album is expected to set new one-week sales records on Apple’s iTunes Store.

Target — one of Ms. Swift’s corporate sponsors—sold more than 400,000 copies, also a one-week record for the chain.

Breaking the one-million-unit mark today takes more ingenuity than it did in 2000, the year the CD-sales boom peaked.

The pace of million-sellers has slackened along with broader music sales, which have fallen by nearly 42% in the past 12 years.

Sales have been hurt by Internet piracy and a variety of other factors.

As online access replaces ownership, million-selling debuts could become a thing of the past.

Ms. Swift’s latest ascent into the stratosphere has been aided by several corporate partners, including Papa John’s Pizza which has been delivering to customers Ms. Swift’s “Red” CD along with a single-topping large pizza for a total of $22.

Her photo also appears on Papa John’s pizza boxes.

Many of Walgreen’s 8,000 locations have displayed the disc prominently, along with free-standing, life-size cardboard images of the 22-year-old pop star that fans have used for photo opportunities.

Wal-Mart offers a limited edition Red ‘Zine Pack.

The album has also been powered largely by more traditional means.

Since announcing the album in August, Big Machine has released four singles and played 30-second previews of each song the day before the singles went on sale on iTunes.

Potentially boosting Ms. Swift’s sales, Big Machine isn’t making her album available through online streaming services such as Spotify for at least several months.

Many artists and labels have complained that they make little from such services, which let users listen to unlimited amounts of music for a flat monthly price, or even free.

Though Ms. Swift is nominally a country artist, her music has taken on an increasingly pop sound, a key to attracting more buyers.

You don’t get a number like she did without attracting a number of tribes.

It’s the niche-ing of America.

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Tags: Taylor Swift

This entry was posted on November 16, 2012 at 5:55 am and is filed under Mktg - Promotion, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.