[MountainHip]

From a while back but to give a few quotes....

"1 in 6 canadian household's own a tragically hip album"

"So how do the record companies in Canada transform local talent into global successes?" "in some cases, local artists are sent to the northern part of Canada for months, where they perform before smaller groups"

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9903/17/canada.music.wb/">http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Music/9903/1 ... .music.wb/</a><!-- m -->

rather amusing, I thought.

[prz]

quite the stat to pass around at a party.

[The Darkest Canuck]

1 in 6...that's it????????? :mrgreen:

[lord brazle]

So if the population of Canada in 1999 was 30,491,300...
Then that would be a total of 5,081,883 albums...

~Enter Unneccessary Calculations~

At approx. 20 bucks an album, that's $101,637,660...
Divide that by the 13 years they had been on the scene...
That would leave abouts $7,818,281 per year....
Then divided by five for each band member....
That means they each had made roughly $1,563,656.20 per year....

~End~

Don't even ask why I felt it neccessary to estimate the Hip's income, especially in such a rough manner...
If I made 1.5 million a year, I'd be brain-dead in the first six months...
So would everybody within a five-mile radius....

[cferneyh]

So if the population of Canada in 1999 was 30,491,300...
Then that would be a total of 5,081,883 albums...

~Enter Unneccessary Calculations~

At approx. 20 bucks an album, that's $101,637,660...
Divide that by the 13 years they had been on the scene...
That would leave abouts $7,818,281 per year....
Then divided by five for each band member....
That means they each had made roughly $1,563,656.20 per year....

~End~

Don't even ask why I felt it neccessary to estimate the Hip's income, especially in such a rough manner...
If I made 1.5 million a year, I'd be brain-dead in the first six months...
So would everybody within a five-mile radius....

I like the theory behind your math, but a couple of problems:

(1) There are just under 11 million households in Canada ("1 in 6 canadian household's own a tragically hip album"), so it is more like 1.8 million albums sold.
(2) Don't forget about the record company's share of that $20 per album sold. I've got no idea what that would be but I'm guessing it's probably somewhere between 60% and 75%.

[thedarkcanuck]

i would say even more than 75% for the record company

[lord brazle]

(1) There are just under 11 million households in Canada ("1 in 6 canadian household's own a tragically hip album"), so it is more like 1.8 million albums sold.

Damn-it! That's a major figure in the calculations! I can't believe I missed that...

(2) Don't forget about the record company's share of that $20 per album sold. I've got no idea what that would be but I'm guessing it's probably somewhere between 60% and 75%.

I knew that one though... I actually heard somewhere that artists get even less than the 25% to 40% you've mentioned... something impossible like 10%-15%...

I was just playing with it. Not exactly seriously. I wonder if someone could actually have patience to figure out how much they make. You'd need to figure in all sorts of stuff I guess. There's be no way of knowing a definite number... My take on it is utter bullshit; I didn't figure in how much they've spent (cost of living) from 1987 to 1999.... and they probably increased in income over the years (they probably made more in 99 than they made in 89, etc).

[wpghipfan]

The band gets roughly $1 from every CD sold... and that's a generous figure.

Rory
Halifax

[grooveless touque]

Another thing that must be figured into the calculations (even though it is folly to estimate album sales from such abstract evidence) is that many households own more than 1 album. Every one of our households probably owns 10 albums. That 1.8 million is a bare minimum hypothetical one-album-per-householdfigure, because we know that the first three albums have surpassed the one million mark...the last four albums have sold half a mil or less, meaning in an incredibly loose estimation, most likely they have sold 6-9 million albums.

[cferneyh]

Another thing that must be figured into the calculations (even though it is folly to estimate album sales from such abstract evidence) is that many households own more than 1 album. Every one of our households probably owns 10 albums. That 1.8 million is a bare minimum hypothetical one-album-per-householdfigure, because we know that the first three albums have surpassed the one million mark...the last four albums have sold half a mil or less, meaning in an incredibly loose estimation, most likely they have sold 6-9 million albums.

Yeah, but when they calculated the "1 in 6" figure, I can virtually guarantee that what they did was took the total amount of albums sold and divided it by the number of households in Canada. It's the only way they could have come up with the figure short of conducting a survey with a random sample of Canadians and finding the true incidence of Hip CD ownership, and I can virtually guarantee that they didn't do that.

Here's another way to look at it. Say out of 100 random Canadian adults 5 of them own at least one Hip CD, and 95 don't. Of those 5 people, let's say two of them own 10, two of them own five, and the last one owns three. That's a total of 33 Hip CDs owned by a random sample of 100 Canadian adults, which you could then take and say "per capita, 33% of Canadian adults own a Hip CD" when the true incidence is actually only 5%.

Anyway, I'm probably only confusing everyone but the point that I'd trying to make is that as of when that article was written, 1.8 million CDs sold is actually a lot closer to the truth than 5+ million (in Canada at least).

BTW, I work in stats which is why I'm so anal about these calculations and how I have a pretty good idea of how CNN came up with their "1 in 6" figure. :oops: :thumb:

[vicariousmartyr]

Hahaha, this all reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the school gets snowed in and the kids take over the school. They get into Skinners office, and try figuring out how much money he makes. Thats all I could think of, just had to mention it.

'I wasnt principal when I was one!' :lol: :mrgreen: :lol: