Something I said on ILM yesterday.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which nobody addressed - the thread was moving fast and this was a tangent.

I can think of two long-term marketing triumphs for the record industry. The former possibly accidental (but probably not), the latter definitely on purpose. First is the promotion of the album as a format and the repackaging of popular music as non-disposable. Second (linked to the first) is the promotion and success of the CD format as a way to buy old music as well as new.

It's the level of accident I'm interested in really. The move to album format, the move away from disposability - when did these happen (I know that in the UK 1969 was the year album sales overtook single sales), and how proactive or reactive were the record labels in this?

Comments

[koganbot]

I have a list of Cashbox magazines from 1960 on in front of me, and the best-selling album of every year was a soundtrack album from 1960 to 1967, with one exception (Meet The Beatles in 1964). In fact, the Broadway cast of Sound Of Music is number one in 1960 and number five in 1961, then the film soundtrack of Sound Of Music was number one in 1966 and number two in 1967.

Top five 1967: Dr. Zhivago soundtrack; Sound of Music soundtrack; A Man And A Woman soundtrack; More Of the Monkees; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Beatles.

Top five 1968: Disraeli Gears - Cream; The Graduate soundtrack (but for all practical purposes this is a Simon & Garfunkel album); Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix Experience; Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel; Look Around - Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66.

But those top fives don't show the extent of the sea change. With very few exceptions, the top of the album sales lists were soundtracks and comedy albums and folk albums and easy listening/adult pop (e.g., Garland, Streisand, Sinatra, Bennett). Whereas in 1968, easy listening is still holding on a bit (Sergio Mendes, Herb Alpert, and Paul Mauriat in the top ten), Simon & Garfunkel have folk tendencies but are basically a rock act, and what this really means is that rock has swallowed the younger end of the folk audience; and not counting the Graduate as a soundtrack (and fundamentally you shouldn't, though it does get some of the adult buyers of soundtracks), no soundtrack is in the top ten. I don't have sales figures, but my assumption is that they are jumping way higher in 1968.

If you're interested, rock 'n' roll/rock/youth pop acts to make the top ten prior to 1968 (I'm not counting easy listening as a "pop" act, which I know is somewhat arbitrary, and also I'm specifying "youth" pop in order to eliminate Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, which is also somewhat arbitrary; and not calling folk acts like the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul & Mary "pop" is also somewhat wrong; but the basic thing is that the "youth" market is mostly singles until 1967 or so, whereas the stuff that's selling on the album lists has significant adult appeal and I'm assuming isn't selling in the quantities that singles are, though I don't have figures to back this up):

1960: The Platters, Elvis
1961: Elvis, The Platters (top ten also contains someone named Rusty Warren, whom I know nothing about)
1962: Elvis, Ray Charles, Joey Dee
1963: Elvis
1964: The Beatles, The Kingsmen (!!) (and going down the chart from here, the only non-Beatles youth rock/pop acts in the top 40 are the Beach Boys, the Dave Clark Five, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles (which is really adult), Elvis)
1965: The Supremes, The Beatles, The Beach Boys
1966: Herman's Hermits, Animals (these were both best-ofs)
1967: Monkees, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Monkees, Monkees, Doors (so here the shift is already taking place; top three albs being soundtracks but after that Herb Alpert is the only representative of the adult market)
1968: Cream, Graduate (S&G), Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Beatles

[koganbot]

I have a list of Cashbox magazines from 1960 on in front of me

I mean, I have Cashbox magazine's list of top 40 top-selling albums for each year from 1960 to 1968.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

What's !! about the Kingsmen? Louie Louie is a bonafide classic.

[koganbot]

That the album sold big when its prime audience wasn't generally buying albums and the band only had one hit and one half-hit ("Money") to build on.