Another stats-filled gem from Advertising Age's Brian Steinberg on how in addition to decent Nielsen ratings, Glee has spawned big music sales and a tour.
Whereas shows such as "Grey's Anatomy" weave in pop music and can boost a band, "Glee" produces its own music that can be sold for revenue. And sales are going strong.
- "Glee: The Music, Volume 2" has sold 472,086 copies to date and is currently No. 22 on Billboard's Top 200 chart
- "Glee: The Music, Volume 1" has sold 677,571 copies to date and is currently No. 27 on Billboard's Top 200 chart
To date, there have been 4,284,998 downloads of "Glee" songs [presumably for purchase - the article goes into more detail about top iTunes performers]
Not really no. They still have to give royalties to the label that owns the rights to the song and we all know Labels Take MOST of the money. It’s still another source of revenue yes but hardly something that would make them rich.
Holy crap, they have a ten-cast plus “ensemble” cast?
@Ali: Even if only $2/disc and 20% of iTunes revenue is the gross profit for Glee/FOX(and really, the major expense is royalties as the music was already recorded for the show), that’s still $3.1 million, or almost $250,000 per episode that’s aired already. That’s likely about 15% of an episode cost, not a bad take at all for something that only marginally added to expenses.
I’m not sure if it has changed for 2010, but songwriter royalties used to be less than a dime (9.1 cents) per song sold. Volume one of the CD sold for ~$13 and had 18 songs on it, so that would be ~$1.64/$13 or nearly 13% in songwriter royalties per CD sold. That leaves a bit left over to divvy up.
On iTunes downloads, it takes less of a percentage: $.091/$1.29 or around 7%.
Robert, I believe you are correct on the cost of the royalties. My brother in law has released CDs containing other artists songs and I was surprised at how little he had to pay to use the material.
Kathy, the royalties are much more complex when artist royalties are included. So if you want to cover the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction” it is only the 9.1 cents per song sold (unless it went up in 2010). But if you use the original Rolling Stones version of Satisfaction, it’s more expensive – it’s the 9.1 cents plus anywhere from like 10%-25% of the price of the song for the artist royalty. Where it falls in that percentage range depends on a variety of factors that are too complex to get into here (even if I understood them fully!).
Fortunately, Glee doesn’t have to deal with recording artist royalties since all the songs are covers — it only has to deal with songwriter royalties.
There’s no doubt that – over time – more and more shows are going to branch out to create different streams of revenue (other than DVDs, that is). Both Glee & Castle are doing a great job (Castle has the novels “written” by Castle himself), and I fully expect to see more shows get in on that.
plus after season 1, they will have had 3 dvd release to make more money….. Season 1 V1, Season 1 V2, and the Complete First season…
Glee is cleaning up, but they need it cuz they have huge cast…. and many guest appearence to pay for…
Glee is very young-skewing and thus advertiser-friendly, plus it has the songs as an additional source of revenue, so Fox must be making a pretty handsome profit off the show here.
Is it just me, or does the Fox business model beat the hell out of the other nets?
Glee has 12 regulars plus the four semi-regular ensemble members. The regulars are the 10 pictured in the disc cover photo above, plus Jessalyn Gilsig as Terri Schuester and Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester, both of whom will supposedly have musical numbers in upcoming episodes.
It’s funny how the article uses Single Ladies as an example of covered song in the show, when this is actually one of the very few songs that were used in the original version haha.
GLEE soundtracks are also being sold outside the US, here in my country it is selling well and I bet other countries too.
GLEE’s international license fee must be high too, there are 3 channels here that is showing that show and two of those channels aired the show with just a few delays from the U.S. airing. And I live in a small asian country so I assume in other markets Glee is also huge. I saw the latest UK Singles Chart and their rendition of Don’t Stop Believin is in the top 5 sales.
Say what you want about the quality of the show but FOX successfully build a franchise for this show and I bet they are earning huge profits. Very impressive. I would have thought ABC would be the first one who could create such kind of show especially with their Disney connection but FOX was very smart to find this show.
Add dvd sales and possible syndication to the mix and rerun ad time and shows can make a good amount these days..Heroes anyone? Star trek?