With 24 million copies sold worldwide as of this month, Adele‘s ‘21‘ stands as the best selling album of the past decade- surpassing records previously held by Michael Jackson‘s ‘Thriller’ and Usher‘s 2004 mega seller ‘Confessions‘.
Now, it has emerged that the singer’s record label XL Recordings reaped major financial rewards as a result of the LP’s success. Rewards, to the tune of $41 million.
Details below…
Following its January 2011 launch, the project boosted XL’s turnover from £21.4 million to £111.7 million. This, lifting pre tax profits from £4.1 million to a sweet £41.7 million.
Unveiled by the Sunday Times Business supplement this week, the company’s impressive financial year is unlikely to be matched this year, with sales of the project cooling in recent months.
Let’s hope this serves as a valuable lessons to rival labels, investing capital in music just as generic as the characters spewing them.
For, as the continued commercial successes of Coldplay, Drake and Beyonce attests to, consumers will purchase albums if convinced the project is worth more than two or so singles used to endorse it.
In short, the sooner labels begin to push acts of substance from all genres, the greater their chances of pulling in numbers akin to ‘21′ will be.
Until then,major congratulations to Team Adele and any performer striving to deliver quality products in a cheapened market.