Rebirth in America

Chapter 31 Record Sales

In the United States in 1925, a popular song lasted an average of sixteen months, and about one million copies of the song were published.

By the 1950s, when a pop song had a lifespan of only a few weeks, selling a quarter of a million copies of the sheet music was considered a good thing.

Due to the development of industry, the importance of radio became more and more prominent in the 1920s.

By the 1930s, the record industry was booming again. In addition, industries such as television, jukeboxes, and talkies have also developed, which has made the Tin Pong Alley business method that only relied on the distribution of music scores to make songs popular greatly outdated.

This era is the era of radio broadcasting!

Vast amounts of information are transmitted over the airwaves to thousands of users' radios.

In the early 1950s, American radio stations broadcast approximately 15,000 hours of music programs per week, including serious music, various operas, and pop music.

The needs of radio broadcasting have given rise to the special function of disc broadcasters (also known as DJs). He has the task of introducing music and playing songs requested by listeners over the phone.

Some music lovers will call and ask for their favorite songs to be played during prescribed music radio programs. An experienced broadcaster can keep the public interested in some songs and can also create popular songs to some extent.

Alex's songs became popular so quickly because the DJs on these radio stations liked their songs very much. Radio DJs also have a circle. They introduce newly received songs to each other, and their favorite songs will be played over and over again on the radio.

At the beginning of the first half of 1951, the two songs spread throughout the United States. To everyone’s surprise, young people between the ages of twelve and twenty like to listen to the rough and sexy “That’s All Right”. They are the largest pop music group! It is also the most fanatical music group.

Adults over thirty years old like Songs for Mom, and they are the main purchasing power in the record market!

Alex unintentionally caught both types of people, thinking that people in this era all like rock music. In fact, this is not the case. On the contrary, white parents hate this kind of rough and sexy music.

American society after 1950 was a relatively stable decade. In the decades before that, the United States experienced the Great Depression and World War II. It was not until 1950 that the economy began to stabilize and the entire society entered a state of peace.

The stability of society and the improvement of living standards have led to the gradual increase of the middle class. These people have basically experienced the social turmoil of the past few decades, and they particularly cherish the peace and stability in front of them. In a relatively prosperous life, they began to raise children, leading to a peak baby period. By the 1950s, the number of teenagers had increased unprecedentedly.

This generation of young people has not experienced social turmoil. Under superior living conditions and the favor of their parents, their thoughts are seriously different from those of their parents. They often disdain the path arranged by their parents.

Over a long period of time, the rebellious psychology of this generation of young people has grown day by day. In order to pursue their own ideals and hobbies, and to get rid of the constraints of their parents' traditional lifestyle, they have formed a powerful rebellious force. At this time, the strong rhythm and unrestrained rock music aroused their interest.

Correspondingly, their parents don't like rock music, which is vulgar music with strong rhythm and rough and sexy sound! They worry that children who listen to this kind of music will be corrupted, so some conservative parents do everything possible to ban their children from listening to this kind of music. It is precisely because of parents' opposition that more teenagers are following it!

This is a social problem caused by historical reasons. It has existed since the end of World War II, but no one or event has yet become its trigger.

Historically, Elvis did not debut until 1953, thus starting the rock and roll era. As a result, Alex beat me to it by two years, but the rock factor of the song Alex chose was not very obvious! The most important thing is that his voice does not sound like Elvis Presley, and people will know that Alex is a child as soon as they hear it.

The same song, performed by different people, will have different styles and effects. Alex's cover song is more refreshing, but it already uses the unique rhythm of rock. As soon as these two songs came out, they caused huge waves in the music industry.

Alex, who knew only a little about this, had no consciousness of being the culprit. In fact, if there was no further action, maybe the rock music trend would gradually calm down and wait for others to lead the trend of the times.

There are always some unpredictable accidents in the world, and the biggest accident is Alex's rebirth. His arrival brought huge impact and changes to the world.

Rudy was a producer with a musical vision, and when the Carpenters left his company, he had already begun work on the follow-up to the record. At that time, he had already made up his mind to publish the Carpenter Brothers' record.

He personally designed the cover and content of the record and took care of all the related tedious work. Before he could take it out to negotiate with Carpenter and the others, the Carpenters were already furious. That night, someone from the radio station received a call, and the person said he wanted to order 5,000 Carpenter Brothers records.

At this time, he knew that no matter what conditions he offered, it was not too much, so he offered a condition of 40% to 60%. After obtaining the Carpenter Brothers' record sales license, he immediately sent the designed cover to the factory for printing. At the same time, the master tapes were taken to a record pressing factory for processing, and mass pressing began.

As for the processes such as the packaging and printing of records, relevant people are following up, so he does not need to interfere. Most importantly, he informed record retailers of the date the record would be available. With all this arranged, all he had to do was wait patiently for the order phone to ring.

In one week, the Carpenters sold 300,000 records! The retail price of each record is $1.20, and typically, after the cost of the record and the portion given to retailers, the record company still gets half of that money. In other words, $0.6 is divided between the record company and the singer.

300,000 records a week, each record has a profit of 0.6 US dollars, divided 40-60, Teana company can get 72,000 US dollars. As for the Carpenters, they can get $108,000. Of course, the record company still had to pay its employees, and the Carpenters had to pay taxes.

However, this is already a huge profit! Faster than grabbing money.

What's even more frightening is that the ordering phone has been ringing non-stop, even if five more units are installed, they are still busy. When Rudy heard the call, he was as happy as if he saw money flying over.

Bob is in his fifties and comes from a small town in California. He opened a record retail store in town.

Every morning, one of the first things he does is get up, open the door, and pick up a new record to play.

On this day, as usual, he chose a record at random. When the song came from the speaker of the record player, he felt as if he had picked up the wrong song because he had already heard the song.

It's weird, I seem to have heard it somewhere. This shouldn't be a new song! He was thinking, and at the same time, he was considering whether to change the record.

At this time, a boy about fifteen years old broke in.

The boy shouted: Boss, give me a Carpenter Brothers record!

Carpenter Brothers records? Bob wondered, and he replied nonchalantly, I don't have the records you want here.

Eh? Isn't it what you're listening to that the Carpenter brothers sang? the young man asked strangely.

At this time, Bob finally remembered. He always felt that the song he was listening to was very familiar. It turned out that he had heard it on the radio a few days ago. This song is called ASong for Mama (ASong for Mama), a very unique country music, and he likes it very much.

He handed over a new, unopened record and said, $1.20 a piece!

The boy took out more than ten pieces of change from his pocket and counted them. Fortunately, he had enough money to buy a record. He put the money into Bob's hand while holding the record carefully.

After Bob sent the boy away, another guest came in, a white woman in her thirties. She also walked in because she heard the singing. She usually doesn't buy records. Her husband usually buys them to listen to. This song touched her heart, so she planned to buy a copy and listen to it.

One after another, people came in to buy records. Many of them came to buy the records of the Carpenter Brothers. Some people had never heard of them before, and they came to buy records of other singers. After listening to the Carpenter Brothers' song in the store, I immediately paid for it.

By noon, the 20 records that Bob bought had been sold out. Usually in a small town like theirs, it would take a week to sell 20 records. Unexpectedly, so many copies were sold in just one day. UU read www.uukanshu.net

Here's a Carpenter Brothers record! Someone still wanted to buy the record.

Bob quickly said: No more, it's sold out!

The man pointed at the record player and said, Isn't there another one? I want that one!

That's a sample, not for sale! Bob explained, and he didn't want to sell it either. He plans to keep one for himself and take it out to listen to when he has free time.

The man had no choice but to buy it elsewhere. The man next to him had an idea and said to Bob: I'll pay double the price and sell it to me. Are you worried about not buying it again tomorrow?

Bob listened, thought about it, and agreed.

When Bob remembered this the next day, he quickly called the Tianlai company. This company has signed a contract with him very early on, and they are old customers who have cooperated with him for a long time.

Hey, I want to buy another 100 Carpenter Brothers records! Bob said to the customer service of Tianlai Company.

He originally thought that there would be no problem in purchasing the goods. It was only 100 pieces, and it was not a large quantity. Unexpectedly, the customer service told him that this record was out of stock and he would have to wait a few days for it to be available.

Ah? How many more days have to wait! Bob was very disappointed after hearing this, and murmured: If I had known, I wouldn't have sold the last record!

Not only was Bob out of stock, but the record companies were also out of stock, and they had their record production lines churning out Carpenter Brothers records. But even so, it still couldn't keep up with the sales speed, and people had a huge demand for these two songs.

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