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Charlotte's
Profits Pile up |
Charlotte’s Profits
Pile Up For Sony
Karen Price
Arts
And Media Correspondent
19/11/1999
CHARLOTTE
CHURCH is fast becoming record company Sony’s greatest signing.
Her new album
is poised for chart success this weekend which will swell her bank
balance even further.
But the real
winner will be her record company Sony, which earns up to three
times more than Charlotte for each of her CDs sold.
The company has
already made about £15m in sales alone from Charlotte’s debut
album, Voice of An Angel, which has sold almost
three-million copies worldwide.
It has also
amassed a fortune from the teenage soprano’s promotional work and
royalties.
Charlotte is
becoming Sony’s most bankable asset, despite it boasting household
names such as Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Bruce
Springsteen and Manic Street Preachers
Nigel McCune,
music business adviser for the Musician’s Union, said Charlotte
was a vital asset for Sony.
“It’s
vastly important that they continue marketing her in the way they
are.”
More than
300,000 copies of Charlotte’s second album, Charlotte
Church, went on sale at record stores throughout the UK on
Monday.
Hundreds of
thousands of other copies have been delivered to countries across
the globe, including America, Australia, New Zealand, the Far East
and Europe.
For each copy
sold, Charlotte stands to earn between 10 and 15 per cent of the
cover price, while Sony receives between 25 and 30 per cent.
This means that
if three-million copies of Charlotte’s debut album had been sold
at £14 each, Sony would have received almost £15m.
“The record
companies maintain the reason why their share is so high is because
they invest so much in new talent and so few of those acts go on to
do well,” said Mr McCune.
It is not only
the record companies that earn more than the artists from the sale
of a CD - the retailer will take 30 per cent and the manufacturer 20
per cent.
The rest of the
money is split between the producer (1.5 per cent) and copyright
(8.5 per cent).
Mr McCune said
one of the reasons Charlotte was such a success story was because
she was conquering America - something that many popular bands in
Britain, including Oasis and the Manic Street Preach-ers, were
failing to do.
He said that
with the increasing popularity of classical music, Charlotte was one
star whose rise was set to continue.
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