Katy Perry Made How Much?

For Katy Perry, 2011 was a huge year. She went #1 five times and was the most played artist on the radio, which resulted in 2 million sales of her album Teenage Dream and 24 million digital download sales. Her tour was rumored to have grossed $50 million.

What were the expenses? Sources inside EMI reveal that the production of the album cost around 4 million dollars, much of it thanks to the $100,000 per song fees of producers Max Martin and Dr. Luke. Then there's the $250k minimum for promotion of the singles to radio.

So what did Katy end up with? Ms. Perry is estimated to have made $44 million last year, according to Forbes Magazine. How about EMI? Supposedly they made at least $8 million alone before commercials, movie trailers or foreign sales.

On the surface, 8 million bucks sounds like a lot, but considering that the album had 5 hit singles, it's really not all that much. Of course, the fact the Perry doesn't have a 360 deal with the label didn't help. If the ratio of labels hits to misses is an average of 10 to 1 as many claim, they need to make a lot more than that on their hits.

The bottom line is that there's still huge money to be made in certain parts of the music business. Record labels don't seem to be one them.

-----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.