1. Your Music Sucks.
The first and most obvious reason. If your music sucks you won’t sell any albums, plain and simple (although I’ve seen some artists that suck and still sell but we’ll go over that in some of the other points).
2. You don’t have a catchy tune.
Believe it or not one-hit wonders do sell. Take the Baha Men for example, they are mostly if not only known for their hit song “Who Let The Dogs Out” which won a Grammy Award and a Billboard Music Award but they soon faded when they couldn’t provide another hit song. I don’t condone this but if you can only pull one good track out of your ass it might as well be one that will be stuck in peoples heads forever.
3. You’ve been known to put out disappointing albums in the past.
If you have a bad track record why would people want to waste their money on your product again? Fool me once shame on you etc etc.
4. Your album art isn’t too easy on the eyes.
Shit if I’m in the store and I see a cool looking album fuck yeah I’m gonna wanna buy it. One of the reasons I bought Kanye West’s Graduation was because the artwork done for the album was remarkable and came with a cool poster.
5. You’re not doing something unique and innovative.
Trent Reznor did a brilliant thing by bringing the Nine Inch Nails music to the online world and letting people download for free or pay a price for better quality. Even with having the choice of downloading for free people still purchased the music and the NIN grossed $750,000 in about three days so obviously they’re doing something right.
6. Your label isn’t promoting you properly.
Promotion is key when selling anything. If you release one low budget music video and expect to sell millions, chances are it’s not gonna happen. You need to create a buzz, get people talking – word of mouth is underrated, good press or bad press it doesn’t matter, create controversy, get blogs and media gossiping non stop – people eat that shit up.
7. Blame it on you label.
If you’ve done everything properly and you’re still failing it could be because of your label. Sometimes albums get pushed so far back that the fans get angry and don’t feel like buying the album anymore. Someone at the label could have leaked your album weeks before the release date and your sitting there wondering how everyone is listening to your album but its not even out in stores yet or hardly anyone purchased it.
If you’re new to Hood Fever please visit our Hip Hop Forums.
bodydetoxdiet: 
Alex: 
ultrasurf: 
babafisa: 
Bunker:
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
Lots of other reasons!
You might be a woman. It’s historically extremely difficult for women to progress in the music business.
Your music might be great – but your timing in releasing it might be horrid. If it sounds like last year’s music – or next year’s – no one will buy it.
There might be nothing wrong with your music at all – you might just be unlucky. There are tons of very very talented artists out there who do everything right and still don’t make it. Some of them manage to put out amazing albums for years and still barely make a living.
Not sure this is entirely true…soldja boy fails most of these, but yet still sells more than originators in the game like kool G, krs one, and wutangs latest albums. Although you do have a good starting point to look at. Most people continue to push on, even after failing #1, so maybe we need to get this into the hands of artists as well.
this is a good article.
if i hadn’t read this article, i probably never would have figured out that making good, catchy, unique music and promoting it was the key to selling albums. thanks!
[...] 7 Reasons Albums Don’t Sell – [hood fever] [...]