Yo Worm,
Some interesting suggestions here but, really, the thing that influences album sales the most is radio airplay.
In the UK, there are about 50,000-100,000 people who you might term 'music fans'. They read the music press, hang out on music websites etc.
If an album gets fantastic reviews, many (if not most) of these people will go out and buy it.
However, to get beyond this core group, the only thing that really works is radio airplay. One-off TV appearances, magazine interviews, and even touring have virtually no effect (many people at the Moz shows aren't interested in his current material).
If Moz seriously wants to sell more albums (or just halt his current disastrous sales trajectory), he needs to start selecting brilliant songs as singles, not absolute rubbish like That's How People Grow Up, and so-so album songs like Paris. And he needs to get his musicians to help choose the songs. He doesn't seem able to select the best pieces of music himself, but they could certainly help him. There's no way Alain Whyte would've advised Moz to release the bloody awful Dagenham over the majestic Nobody Loves Us, had his opinion been sought.
Moz and his band can still write fantastic songs; I'd say there were 2 or 3 among the 2009 material, but he's rubbish at selecting the best ones.
His solo career is littered with disastrous single choices. The fact that he's removing Roy's Keen from the Maladjusted re-release says it all...
PS The Morrissey mafia might well get him on Jools Holland and Wossie but they appear to have very little power to influence the playlists of radio stations beyond Radio 2.
Sure, but the premise of my first post was that Morrissey should give up on cracking the charts in the traditional way, that is,
not sell more albums and
not try and venture beyond the core group. The quality of his singles is beside the point. The question is, how could Morrissey change his business practice so that he can continue to release music on his own terms, make money, and best of all leave behind the music industry he's hated for all these years? It means giving up on the dream of Top Ten singles, basically.
His audience is large enough to sustain him if he targets it directly. Consolidate the faithful and any new fans that jump on the bandwagon are so many spoonfuls of rich, delicious, financial gravy. As I said, if it's assumed that only hardcore Morrissey fans are buying YOR, then the worldwide number is about 200k. Sales from that group, plus royalties from existing work, would keep him (and Joyce) in Gucci until the day he dies.
You're right to say radio play affects sales, but I wonder if that was the case with YOR ("Paris") and if there aren't alternative channels to use to promote new singles, namely the web. I get all my news from the web (from this site, in fact). I didn't hear "Paris" on the radio and say, "Hey! New Moz album!" I read about it first on the Cyberwebs. I'll bet most people had the same experience.
In fact, isn't radio becoming less influential these days than the web? Nearly every song or album I've heard about the last few years I've come across on websites first. A larger question but an intriguing one. My guess (and I admit it's just a guess) is that radio is becoming less influential than the web.
Another big question is whether or not there's any room in the charts for the kind of music Morrissey makes. I'm of the opinion that "Something Is Squeezing My Skull" is the best single he's released since the early 90s and in my estimation it sounds utterly anachronistic next to the rest of the pop music in the charts. Not just pleasantly unique-- it goes without saying that he sounds different than the rest because he's better than the rest-- but horse-and-buggy outdated.
And in any case I'm not saying Morrissey not bother to try and get his material played in mainstream channels. What I'm saying is, how can he remove the middle-men in order to streamline his business model enough to avoid record labels altogether? It could work to his benefit to accept modest commercial expectations in exchange for greater business and creative freedom. The Internet would provide that opportunity.
His vanity, unfortunately, wouldn't.
