With the record-shattering movie industry drawing in crazy figures for revenue maybe it makes sense for the seemingly ever-declining music industry to tap into film creative outlets. The last few years have seen a slew of original movie soundtracks doing incredibly in the sales category and even giving the opportunity for newer up-and-comers to have more of a spotlight.
This week Halsey saw a new track being released in the form of "I'm Not Afraid Anymore" for the upcoming 2017 Fifty Shades Darker film. The new single is seductive and perfect for the movie that it's for. It follow Zayn & Taylor Swift's “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” which sold 200,000 units in its first week. To add a basis for measurement, the first Fifty Shades of Grey: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack from 2015 hit number 2 on the Billboard 200 and sold over 2 million copies that year alone. The Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack will be just as star-studded with the likes of Nicki Minaj, Nick Jonas, and Tove Lo to name a few so expect it to chart and sell similarly as successful.
Let's take a look at other examples to maybe further this conversation: one that comes to mind immediately is Furious 7: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa with Charlie Puth, a dedication to main actor Paul Walker, was commissioned for the film, reached number one in 14 countries, got nominated for 3 Grammys and a Golden Globe, and was the best selling song of 2015. The soundtrack as an entire entity saw itself reach Gold certification in at least 4 countries on top of that.
Trolls was a different tale of events but it saw a commercially successful recording being released nonetheless. The unique part trivially was that the 13 track album is the work of primarily Justin Timberlake as a production role. His own work "Can't Stop the Feeling!" was the only promotional single, but had 379,000 downloads in its first week and was the best selling song of 2016. Suicide Squad saw its soundtrack featuring an incredibly long list of stars too. Skrillex, Rick Ross, Twenty One Pilots, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Kehlani, and so on all rounded out the group. To no surprise the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart and even went platinum.
The point to made here is that maybe if you want a quick way to the top of the charts your best route is to put out a single that will be featured on a movie soundtrack. The music and film industries coming together only doubles the publicity and only extents ones business capabilities. The film industry is projected to grow from 286.17 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 324.66 billion in 2020 according to PwC. Maybe the music industry can see some sort of bailout by working with visual media more and more.
What do you think?