The Wall Street Journal has recently reported on the highly anticipated theatrical release of the teen-genre movie “The Hunger Games”, and its accompanying soundtrack release “The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond”. With the soundtrack featuring tracks from big name artists such as Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire and The Decemberists, we are about to witness a real life experiment which may change the sagging fortunes of movie soundtrack sales figures.
In order to provide an explanation, let’s go back into time…
From as far back in time as “The Sound Of Music”, a theatrical movie and its soundtrack album were correlating pieces in the success of the movie itself. Granted that “The Sound Of Music” was a musical first and foremost, the concept of dual success from one movie was etched in stone.
Our next significant forward step in the history of soundtrack album sales was in 1977, when “Saturday Night Fever” took the disco genre to heights never expected and made global stars out of John Travolta [the lead male star of the movie] and The Bee Gees [who wrote and performed the majority of the songs featured on the accompanying soundtrack album].
The 1980’s saw the greatest concentration of soundtrack album success, to the extent that it was a major coup to land a song on a soundtrack album. The movie business was booming; if your song was featured in a released movie and/ or on its accompanying soundtrack, you were effectively tripling your chances of attaining a hit record. History reveals that we saw successful “vanity projects” [1980’s “The Jazz Singer” for Neil Diamond and 1984’s “Purple Rain” for Prince] and low-budget movies which captured the hearts of a massive audience [1987’s “Dirty Dancing”], however it would be the 1990’s providing the greatest success and turning point in soundtrack album trends.
1992’s “The Bodyguard” [starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston] remains the biggest selling soundtrack album in history, with 17 million sales and counting, chiefly on the back of Houston’s immortal version of “I Will Always Love You”. 1994’s “Forrest Gump” made clever use of popular songs from the various decades of music, and bundled them all up as a “greatest hits” soundtrack. In the United States, sales of soundtrack albums peaked in 1999 at 60 million units however it has steadily declined to a figure of only 13 million units as at 2011.
Why has this occurred?
In one word: Internet.
As the world becomes more in tune with the power of the Internet and its influence on the manner in which we listen to and purchase music, the attraction of the “soundtrack album” has reduced to the point of extinction. No longer must we purchase an album or CD in order to listen to our favourite tracks; the Internet enables us to listen to and purchase only our favourite tracks. The public has greater power over its choice with respect to soundtrack albums.
Whilst the people behind the marketing of “The Hunger Games” have been savvy in securing original music from some of today’s biggest music stars to accompany their vehicle, one has to question as to whether these ingredients alone will provide the necessary staying power required to decelerate the decline in soundtrack album sales.
History has shown that you need at least 3 monster single releases from a soundtrack album in order to shift multi-million sales of the product. Taylor Swift’s “Safe & Sound” [the 1st single from “The Hunger Games” soundtrack] has sold well, however it is not a “Love Story” size mega-hit. Let’s see where the present takes us…
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