Katy Perry And The New Super Bowl Sales Bump

When Katy Perry takes the field to present her 12 minutes of Super Bowl halftime entertainment on Sunday, the reality of what that exposure brings will have changed greatly from previous years. Forget music sales, social media followers, viral music videos or any of the other recent analytics that an appearance of such magnitude usually measures by. Sure, those will still be there, but this time the prime metric of the expected Super Bowl bump will be different. Now it’s all about the sponsorships.

Last year’s headliner Bruno Mars watched his album sales jump more than 160 percent right after his Super Bowl appearance, and his earnings for the year topped $60 million, good enough to place 12th on the Forbes list of richest entertainers. Ms. Perry has already sold nearly 100 million units, and that should increase directly after a halftime of greatest hits (even last year’s guests Red Hot Chili Peppers saw their greatest hits package soar over 400%), but the sales are almost an afterthought to an artist in the current music environment. In the new Music 4.0 world we live in, the music is the marketing, not the product.

While Perry came in 23rd on that same list with $40 million last year, she can expect a big bump in revenue in 2015 thanks to a major increase in her concert asking price as well as a big jump in her sponsorships. What that means is that the overhead involved in any major tour she mounts will diminish greatly with sponsors signing on for big dollars, which is where the real money in music is today. Read more on Forbes.