The cast recording for the Broadway show “The Book of Mormon” ranked as number three on the Billboard album chart the week after the Tony Awards. Although this achievement shows that the possibility of commercial success in producing and exploiting cast albums still exists (even taking into account that Amazon had a four-day sale of the album at $1.99), there have not been many successful cast albums in recent years. This article will discuss how, in the wake of changing economic and industry conditions, new business structures have evolved to bolster the production and exploitation of cast albums while shifting the risk and reward from large labels to the authors, investors and producers of the shows themselves.
The Industry Has Changed
For almost eight decades there have been recordings of Broadway and London musical plays, and during some of that time, cast albums were enormously successful. In the 1940s and 50s Columbia had great success with recordings of musicals such as “Show Boat,” “South Pacific,” “My Fair Lady,” “West Side Story” and “Camelot.” Some of these albums reached the number one position on the aforementioned Billboard chart. Many also received significant radio airplay.
