I wonder the difference between the BEST and the BEST selling. Most artists, producers, directors and other parties involved in the entertainment industry are not making what they ought to be making. Some artists even shifted their focus to shows and concerts as their major source of income. This is because of the Skimming,money sapping, talent zapping, Idea tapping and Morale killing PIRATES. I wonder if they ever look for the best marketing strategy to side line these pirates.

Anywaz I have this fascinating idea and a very effective marketing solution that will help to Make huge sales without the pirates interfering.

in today's world, no artist is going to make a fortune from cd sales alone. its a known fact that piracy and free online download is killing the industry and that artist these days make their money through appearances, shows, ring tones etc etc

real talk!

Outside Nigeria, artistes still make money through album sales despite the fact piracy exists over there. But in naija, the artistes barely make money on album sales and depend solely on shows, parties and concerts for that.

In developed countries some artists make sales of a life time wif just an album and in developing countries pirates dictate and decide who sells. well the only major challenge in the developed countries is CYBER PIRACY while in developing nation (Nigeria) the level of cyber piracy is as low as 0.01%. This makes it easier to deal with the pirates in Nigeria. Do you Know that the major factor in the world of the piracy is lack of legal framework backed by several govt authorities. The senate, Federal Inland Revenue Services, Nigerian Police, P.man and so on are meant to sit on this. Imagine how much tax revenue that the FIRS has lost due to the fact that Pirates are not legal entities and therefore cannot be taxed since they cant account for anything. In USA, their tax authority made so compulsory to PROTECT the INTEREST of Hollywood and those in music industry because the derive a huge chunk of revenue from that sector. Did you know that our music and our movies sell abroad as in Africa, Europe and America? Wonder why Nollywood is so full of crappy, trashy, sloppy, floppy movie effect. Its not their fault, i mean who will spend so much on camera effect, film techniques and pure solid sound effect when the pirates are waiting for you to just finish cooking and they will surely eat the largest share. Anoda hint is that which Bank is ready to finance them?
BUT I HAVE THE SOLUTIONs

@zsulu
But I hope u know that piracy is not the only major factor affecting the entertainment industry.

@zsulu
pls can you show me which artist since 2000 made that "sale of a lifetime" you talked about?
a sale of a lifetime is an album shifting 20mill copies worldwide or more.
if you look at record sales from january 2000 you will have 6/7 albums that sold over 20mill copies worldwide while if you look back prior to that date, i can find no less than 60 albums who sold more than 20mill copies. is that just a coincidence? i doubt it.

in 2008 the top selling album worldwide was Coldplay viva la vida album shifting 6.8mill records worldwide while in 2005 Coldplay also had the best selling album worldwide shifting a lil over 8mill copies of the X&Y album. if we go back to 2000, the top selling album was Nsync no strings attached who sold 9.9mill records. the more we go back the higher the figure rises.
today, when an artist sells 1million records, its a great album while back in the days that record wouldnt have been called successful.

cd sales are going down, people dont spend as much money on records/cds as they use to but funny enough DIGITAL sales are up so its not as bad as it seems.

but then if we look at the big picture, in 2008, the artist who had the biggest revenue for the year was Madonna who had $14mill in record sale revenue and a $105mill in touring to get a grand total of $120mill for that year.

the difference between 9ja and developed country is that in the developped world you will seldomly have shops selling pirated copies or people selling pirated cds in the street (there are some but the cops are on their trail).
how many genuine record store can you count in Lagos? HMV/TOWER RECORDS, i doubt it and instead you will have street vendors who made copies in their basements selling the albums.
just like the movie industry, its not possible for an artist  to make any money in 9ja because the "law" and the people upholding the law are not on their side.

also, what we have to understand is that the record companies have been robbing us blind for so many yrs and now more and more people/artist are smelling the coffee. how much do you think it costs to make/produce an album today? how much do you think the record companies profit were? today many artist are doing the whole thing themselves cutting the middle man OUT: composing, recording, distributing, marketing etc its so easy now thanks to the internet and cost almost NOTHING(on a smaller scale).
some independent artist will sell their whole album online for 99cents and still make more profit per album than most recognized artist out there who gets around 15-20% of cd retail price (and i am being very generous) and yet record company make them pay everything out of this money:studio time, production, distribution, packaging, advance money, making of video, singers, musicians,songwriters etc.