What would be the average CD sales for a popular jazz musician?

[Hardbopjazz]

How many CDs/Records do jazz artists sell?

While reading Jimmy Heath's autobiography, he said in the late 70 and 80s, the Heath Brothers releases on Columbia sold between 40 and 60 thousand per release. To me that is a very high number for a jazz musician or group. Maybe Miles Davis is the only other I could think would have sales that high.

[JSngry]

Those first few HB Columbia sides got beaucoup airplay where I lived, and jazz was kinda "popular" then. Columbia was marketing stuff, in-store, DJs, etc. Those figures sound realistic to me, at least for the first one or two, which also had a bit of "crossover" flavor as far as the music itself (not that that bothered me then or now, in may ways I prefer them to the HB's straight-up bebop, there was more vairiety and texture).

[Leeway]

I read an interview with Tim Berne from about the time of the first "Snakeoil" album. He mentioned that he could count on selling about 2,000 copies of his Screwgun releases, but by the time he went to ECM, he was selling about a thousand each. He said it became non-viable to continue his own label. I would assume that with ECM's marketing muscle, he is selling more then he used to, but how much I do not know. I suspect most "Downtown" musicians might sell 500 copies. I believe after about 250-350, the break-even point is reached. Most musicians say that the money now is in appearances.

[David Ayers]

This kind of data is very closely guarded!

I would like to know about top-selling jazz artists and labels. I did read that in classical, which is a bigger field, that the best-selling non-crossover recording artist is Cecilia Bartoli, whose albums sell in total 200,000-500,000 each. Her albums are quite heavily marketed and elaborately packaged, and each has a carefully researched and developed concept. I wonder how top-selling jazz compares to that? I also know that some small labels are funded at a loss by their owners and that at the very bottom end some titles only sell 100 copies. We also know from some years ago that Blue Note were deleting reissue titles which sold less than 500 copies annually. In that Blue Note case, you are talking about very cheap reissues that were regularly marketed as a series and sold in-store, so probably they are a benchmark, of sorts. I am also told by another label owner that CD sales are in constant decline - which we know, of course, and which is why some have given up completely. I am curious about ECM which is the one major label seeming to survive and thrive, but they never talk numbers.

Always interested to hear more, and of course we say CDs but downloads are pretty important to revenue so we should mention those too.

[GA Russell]

I've long been curious about the shift from CDs to downloads among jazz fans. I suspect that jazz fans have switched much less than the general market for music.