not that 32,000 is anything to sneeze at but it appears he actually made a fortune selling his album.
EDIT: which is to say the actual headline is: "Spotify probably better hypemachine than Clear Channel, at the moment"
EDIT: which is to say the actual headline is: "Spotify probably better hypemachine than Clear Channel, at the moment"
Justin Timberlake is also an outlier: he has a huge existing fanbase, had positive reviews for the album and received an avalanche of conventional publicity, including a systematic Clear Channel[2] campaign. It stretches credulity to suggest his popularity on streaming services was more a cause of than an effect of the demand to buy his album
[1]http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/11/if-spotify-is-the-new-rad... ... the author's revised opinion of Spotify is also interesting reading
[2]http://justintimberlake.com/news/2013/tune-into-to-your-favo...
EDIT: For typo
Given the number of people involved in the creation of a CD that's pretty good but not exactly a fortune. Many fortunes will be made from this endeavor, and they'll be from things other than direct sales of music content to consumers
Also, Suit & Tie had 9,394 radio spins in it's first week, which is the most in the chart's history, that's a first week audience of 93.4MM people [1]. I'm not sure what the royalties are for radio play in the US, but I imagine it's nothing to be sniffed at.
Keep in mind, this is the first week; Timberlake is absolutely going to make a complete killing from this album and all the related opportunities that arise from it, e.g. touring.
[1] http://mashable.com/2013/01/21/justin-timberlake-suit-and-ti...
Frankly I never cease to be amazed at what a great deal that is compared to how Spotify / Pandora / etc are getting screwed big time on licensing fees.
Traditional radio was / sometimes still is an extremely profitable business. Once you exceed basic costs, it's all gravy minus sales commissions and some production costs on commercials etc. Radio is basically one giant sales business.
It seems as though for radio, from day one, it was heavily a promotional medium for selling physical records, with the added bonus of a sales cut for the music industry. With the move to digital music, I think they stopped looking at it as a means of promotion so much and wanted to own the whole channel (as much as possible). Short sightedness, spurred on by a mixture of fear (eg Napster) and greed (opportunity to rewrite the distribution rules).