I.B. BAD PREVIEWS THE BIG RACE
Will the winner be Eminem (whose previous LP debuted with 741k and has sold 4.46m to date) or Lady Gaga (with a 1.11m first week, bolstered by Amazon MP3’s 99-cent sale, and 2.3m RTD), on Jimmy Iovine and John Janick’s IGA? Will the second volume of Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, on Peter Edge and Tom Corson’s RCA, be as big as the first, which bowed with 968k and is now at 2.1m?
Could it be Cash Money’s Drake (631k, 2.04m) for Monte Lipman’s Republic? What about the third album from One Direction on Rob Stringer’s Columbia, who built tremendous momentum by releasing their first two LPs just eight months apart, old-school style, totaling more than 3.5m? Or Katy Perry, on Steve Barnett’s CMG, whose 2010 album Teenage Dream got off to a surprisingly soft start, with a first week of just 192k, but achieved massive momentum behind a staggering 30m singles, going on to tally 2.74m?
In terms of potential comebacks, there’s more than a little pressure surrounding the Q4 releases from Columbia’s Beyoncé, coming off a relatively disappointing sales performance with 2011’s 4 (310k, 1.4m) and RCA’s Britney Spears, who failed to hit a home run with her previous effort, 2011’s Femme Fatale (276k, 777k). Likewise with RCA’s Kings of Leon, whose sales dipped from 2.3m on their 2008 breakthrough Only by the Night (which contained the crossover smash “Use Somebody”) to 730k on 2010’s hitless Come Around Sundown.
Will the all-important sophomore effort from Columbia’s Foster the People approach the band’s hit-driven debut-album total of 970k? Then there’s Mike Dungan’s triumvirate of UMG Nashville power hitters: Luke Bryan (145k, 2.07m), who’s expected to have the biggest late-summer debut with his 8/13 release; Scotty McCreery (197k, 1.18m); and Keith Urban (162k, 743k). And don’t underestimate Brushfire/Republic’s Jack Johnson (243k, 842k), who has quietly conducted one of the most consistently productive careers of the last decade.
On the indie front, the most high-profile release will come from Merge: the follow-up to Arcade Fire’s 2010 career album The Suburbs (156k, 770k), which won the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year. It will also be interesting to see how Nine Inch Nails will fare in the band’s return to a major, Columbia, following a couple of DIY releases that failed to sell significant numbers.
In the record business, of course, there’s always the possibility that a record will come out of nowhere and connect on a massive scale; just look at Adele, who turned around the long-floundering record business almost singlehandedly in 2011, a positive year for album sales (+1.4%), track sales (+9%) and overall with TEA (+3.2%).
In other activity, Guggenheim Partners’ hoped-for acquisition of VEVO from Sony Music, UMG and their investor partners, which, according to some insiders, appeared to be a sure thing, has hit a snag and now may not close after all.
Industry eyes are on Coldplay as the band transitions to Warner Bros. from Capitol through the Parlophone divestment. While manager Dave Holmes and WBR chief Cameron Strang are expected to form a solid working relationship, will the artist-friendly Rob Cavallo, who still holds the title of label Chairman, play a role in making the band members feel comfortable in their new home?
Rihanna has signed a new long-term contract with Roc Nation as part of its recent deal with UMG. Her future releases will probably continue to go through IDJ, continuing a productive long-term relationship with the Steve Bartels-led label, even as Roc Nation builds its own brand. On that subject, does Jay Brown (who manages Rihanna and Shakira) have the bandwidth to become a top major-label exec? And where does ex-Mercury U.K. label head Jason Iley fit into Jay Z’s scheme?
Mariah Carey is shopping a new deal with one record left on her current contract with IDJ and is possibly headed back to Sony, where she would most likely reunite with Epic’s L.A. Reid, who orchestrated her 6 million-selling 2006 album The Emancipation of Mimi. Carey’s attorney and her new manager, Red Light COO Bruce Eskowitz, are supposedly asking elephant bucks from UMG to stay.
Names in the rumor mill: Troy Carter, Scott Rodger, Johnny Wright, Richard Griffiths, Larry Rudolph and iTunes Radio.
