Last week, Yoko Ono and Amnesty International celebrated the sale of 15,000 copies of a special album of John Lenon’s post-Beatles songs. Ono gave the rights to use all of the songs to Amnesty International. The album was made to raise money for the victims of the conflict in Dafur. The album, which was released on June 25 2007, has Green Day, U2, Snow Patrol, Christina Aguilera, and a host of other musicians on it. The issue, however, is not about the quality of the album – although there have been discussions on that – the issue here is about the low sales figure of the album. Amnesty international had distributed half a million copies of the CDs, but the ceremony was to celebrate the sale of only 15,000 copies.
A little about charity records
The first charity album was by Band Aid, a British and Irish group put together by Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1984. The record went straight to top the UK charts, and outsold all of the other records on the chart put together. The single, Do They Know It’s Christmas, sold a million in the first week of release, and became the fastest-selling single ever in the UK, later to be replaced by Elton John’s Candle in the Wind, another single whose proceeds went to charity. Band Aid’s album stayed at number 1 for five weeks, and sold over 3 million copies in the UK.
Sir Elton John’s recording of Candle in the Wind became the second best selling single of all times, after selling over 33 million copies worldwide. According to Wikipedia, it was estimated that ‘at the peak of sales, almost six copies of the single were sold across the world per second’. The profit from the sales was donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
Reasons for the low sales
CNN’s story on the issue has a commentator talking about the fact that the Dafur issue was not a one-time event, like Princess Diana’s death, but that it has been a slowly unfolding disaster. In the opinion of the commentator, that was a reason why the albums has not sold so much. My response to that is simply to point to it that the Band Aid album was not about a one-time event, but about a famine. Therefore, the argument that the record did badly because it addresses a slow drama does not hold. And then, Candle in the Wind went and sold that much not because the proceeds was donated to charity, but because people felt strongly about Princess Diana, and the song evoked such strong emotions from the Princess’ fans that they all wanted to have it.
Another commentator says that the public might be suffering from a charity song fatigue. I buy into this argument, but I think it can only go as far as a certain level. One can talk about charity song fatigue, but I think one also has to talk about a more informed audience. The 1984 public that bought Do They Know It’s Christmas definitely is not the same public to whom the Lennon cover album is marketed. People have become inundated with so much image of the starving Africa child suckling on the breast of its dying mother that their sensibility has grown resistant to such imageries. Also, there are so many charity organisations that compete for the money of the well-meaning citizens of the developed world such that an album by one of the organisations has a lot more competition than Band Aid’s 1984 album.
A constellation of reasons
One cannot easily attribute a cause to the low sales of the Lennon cover album but to a constellation of issues, chief of which is the big boom in the donor/development industry. Others include donor fatigue, charity song fatigue and a host of other fatigues. If this constellation of reasons means that people are less willing to buy charity albums now than they used to, one should not be surprised when more ingenous ways of raising money appear. I am waiting to see the new methods….