Billboard are holding true to their promise of overhauling the protocol attached to bundling music with merchandise.
With the marketplace rapidly evolving, artists and their teams have been tasked with finding innovative ways of getting music to the masses – and maximising profits.
Pairing music with merchandise has emerged as one means of achieving this, yet it hasn’t been without controversy. Most notably with Travis Scott‘s triumph over Nicki Minaj‘s ‘Queen’ thanks to sweater sales and DJ Khaled‘s outrage over a planned energy drink deal that was ultimately disallowed – thus denying him a #1.
These instances and countless others have caused for ample debate. Some have embraced merch bundles as simply reflecting the a shapeshifting marketplace; others (a la Minaj) have deemed it cheating.
To quell the flames, today has seen Billboard detail the changes that’ll come into play at the very start of 2020.
Full story below…
From January 3rd, here’s what’ll change:
“In order for an album sale to be counted as part of a merchandise/album bundle, all the items in the bundle must also be available for purchase concurrently and individually on the same website. In addition, the merchandise item sold on its own will have to be priced lower than the bundle which includes both the merchandise and the album. Further, merchandise bundles can only be sold in an artist’s official direct-to-consumer web store and not via third-party sites.” [Source]
Interestingly, these rules will apply to any album already up for pre-order now that has its release set for anytime after Jan 3rd.
As at now, the incoming changes will not impact the album-ticket bundle system that’s in place; a system that, after a few tweaks of its own, now only sees manually redeemed copies of LPs counted towards the project’s first week tally.
With the alteration of the merch-music rules, will this result in a fairer play? What are…
Finally
Flops will stop topping the charts.
we would finally know who the real album sellers are.
Camila is lucky she’s releasing her album next week and not after January 3rd. That’s all I have to say..
Sip that.
Actually per ticketmaster, nobody is buying tickets for Camila’s tour so this doesn’t impact her lol.
Sis learn to read
It’s not TICKET bundling that’s being impacted by this rule, it’s MERCHANDISE bundling
Two diff things
????
Gurl ur scared Camila second album gonna hit number one, u can’t make up ur mind.
How many times have u been wrong
U want me to bring out the receipts
U still haven’t answered my question, u said Taylor doesnt like Camila anymore, u said Taylor was done with her, u said nobody likes Camila, so why did Taylor bring out Camila and halsey to perform shake it off at the AMA awards? Lol
Ur a liar, how are u gonna twist this? Camila is using Taylor for relevance?
It was not Camila on stage with Taylor, it was anita or rosalia?
??????
Pretty sure that h** is selling her album with shirts. But regardless, I wish her well.
@king a
Educate the fool, it cant read.
Always full of hatred.
Always spreading fake news about Camila cause ur jealous of her success.
kingz your out of place boo. they sale merch (bundles) at the venue. what only facts is saying is if nobody’s there (buying tickets) per what ticketmaster is reporting, its redundant lol.
Yes ma’am they are finally listening to the Queen ? Nicki Minaj told them this last year about Travis Scott and y’all act like she was retarded for speaking the Truth, now y’all want to switch rules Give the Queen ? her number 1 Record. Nicki Minaj is a Prophetess
Nicki u better hurry up and release ur trash album before these new rules take efdect cause we know u aint sell s*** without boundles.
U really are obsessed with the Queen ? give this sluuttt a ticket ? she’s a FAN
Nicki could flop and still be the highest selling female rapper no one else will ever have 104 entries and a #1 in 6 genres f*** the hot 100
???????
What’s the point of a ticket bundle when no one is barely buying tickets.
No sell outs.
3 performances on AMA , huge exposure, SNL, playlists, big budgets, videos and NOT one sold out date.
We love to see it. ?????????
lol
Camicky thinks she’s fooling the public by saying Seniorita is lead single ?????
Sorry. It’s Shawns released on Island
Sweetie your lead single tanked.
Imagine Normani retroactively saying Love Lies is her lead single ???????
She has something called integrity. They hate to see it ????????
Ur worried Camila gonna hit number one on the album charts.
????
U are afraid and threatened that Camila will hit number one again with her second album.
????
Camila got these haters scared.
Album hasn’t dropped and they are already tearing the album apart. Lol
Ur afraid of Camila power.
Sunflower was the lead single on the spider man soundtrack but post malone still added it in his album Hollywood bleeding , not as a bonus or deluxe track, as a main track on his album.
Billboard allowed it
Monica didnt even write the boy is mine but this bìtch named her album the boy is mine and that song on it
Camila wrote seniorita. She sang more parts in that song than shawn Mendes. Seniorita is Camila culture not shawn. Camila is latino who speaks spanish shawn is a white boy from Canada
If normani wants to add love lies and dancing with the stranger on her album, good for her, even tho thoses songs wont fit together on an album. One is rnb , one is dance.
And both songs are old, neither did any of those songs hit number one. Love lies peaked at number 10, DWAS peaked at number 8.
I feel like she’s release about 8 songs so far, but yet you are still this damn excited about the full album release? I’m trying to figure out why when you have heard almost every song right???
Love Lies is now 4X platinum
Co Written by Normani
Hahahhahahaahhahaahahhahaah
They hate to see it.
A smash hit without an album. We love to see it
?????????????
Stop embarrassing ur self and ur faves.
Love lies was not on any Khalid album.
Love lies peaked at number 10
It had a remix with Rick ross
Camila never be the same outpeaked love lies and dancing with a stranger.
Normani is not gonna happen.
U cant cry and mourn but everybody has started to realise she’s not gonna happen.
When Camila sell out her arena tour , dont deny ur previous comment were u said she wasnt gonna sell out the tour. I keep receipts
LL peaked at 7. yes it was TOP ten, and still 4x platinum.
“It has so far reached a peak of number nine. ”
Bìtch dont tell lies
Love lies peaked at number 9.
Go to billboard.com and confirm.
Stop lying about ur faves stats, normani a flop
you said it peaked at number 10 so try keep up with your lies love ;). im glad you took the time to research. i mixed it up with Dancing With a Stranger my bad. lol
I mean it’s f-ing stupid. Like who idea was it to increase give aways in sales calculations from the jump? Giving away a cd because a fan buys a sweatshirt is not selling a record.
Poor Nicki what will she do without bundles?? 🙁
you clearly need mental help.
Clearly. ?
i’ll just say this… if the copies are not SOLD. they prolly shouldnt count at all but your favs depend on streaming so… billboard has bigger fish to fry. the RIAA is not playing with them or these artist. they went wrong putting the sales/streams together. i feel as though if the song/album is STREAMED a certain amount of times , then thats wtf it should be. A STREAM. if you SOLD A CERTAIN AMOUNT RECORDS, it should count as an actual sale. there are seperate playing fields. it will never make since.
@Normani – I agree.
Madonna and Celine wouldn’t have had their recent #1 albums without it
?
U think so? First of all when u get a cd as part of a bundle u need to claim it otherwise none will send u anything. Plus Celine has alone in USA 70 almost sold out dates across the country… make some maths… if every arena has 10.000 seats (many have much more!) × 70 that would be already 700.000 copies… she sold 113.000. She would have a first week sales of almost million copies if it was by ur logic… plus shes #1 worldwide as well with 254.000 copies sold… not bad after 35 year career… and very little promo…
Goodbye to Celine and Madonna sales