Saturday, October 11, 2003
Is Clear Channel to blame for the Fannypack album bricking?
Musical group Fannypack had one of the biggest hits of this summer with the novelty song "Cameltoe" but the album it was from So Stylistic from Tommy Boy Entertainment has bricked barely scraping to 15,000 units sold despite extensive press in the New York Times (like here and here), very favorable album reviews and the cover of this month's Urb magazine (subscribe here).
Tommy Boy label head Tom Silverman is quoted from a recent music industry conference as blaming the over-use of "call out" research in the radio industry at major radio chains like Clear Channel according to this piece in the "Intelligencer" column of the October 20th issue of New York magazine (scroll down to read). Not sure if this is justified or not but it does highlight a couple of issues that have been hotly debated in the music industry: how the recent consolidation of the distribution channels (radio, retail, TV etc.) has narrowed the number of slots available for new music and artists to be exposed through and how much harder that has made it for indie labels like Tommy Boy, with their smaller promotion and marketing budgets, to compete with the major labels.
Despite the gimmicky nature of "Camletoe," I'll admit that I was surprised at how good an album So Stylistic actually is. That being said I'm not sure the average buyer felt compelled to buy an album of this stuff after hearing just that one single plus, did ayone ever actually ever see a video for "Cameltoe"? Even critic's darlings like Basement Jaxx need more than just press hype to sell albums and if radio won't give you love, then you better hope the video outlets will.
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Tommy Boy label head Tom Silverman is quoted from a recent music industry conference as blaming the over-use of "call out" research in the radio industry at major radio chains like Clear Channel according to this piece in the "Intelligencer" column of the October 20th issue of New York magazine (scroll down to read). Not sure if this is justified or not but it does highlight a couple of issues that have been hotly debated in the music industry: how the recent consolidation of the distribution channels (radio, retail, TV etc.) has narrowed the number of slots available for new music and artists to be exposed through and how much harder that has made it for indie labels like Tommy Boy, with their smaller promotion and marketing budgets, to compete with the major labels.
Despite the gimmicky nature of "Camletoe," I'll admit that I was surprised at how good an album So Stylistic actually is. That being said I'm not sure the average buyer felt compelled to buy an album of this stuff after hearing just that one single plus, did ayone ever actually ever see a video for "Cameltoe"? Even critic's darlings like Basement Jaxx need more than just press hype to sell albums and if radio won't give you love, then you better hope the video outlets will.
