RS8 Manufacturing the Song of the Summer

Global pop star Rihanna has three hit songs from her most recent album, and this month she’s going for her fourth with her latest hit “Man Down.” Zoey Chase, from NPR’s Planet Money, wonders how much it costs to put a song on the pop charts and create a “hit single.”

When we see a song at the top of the iTunes chart, hear it for the first time on the radio, or see the music video for the first time, we generally think that the artist’s “hit” new single is “new” because it’s gaining popularity. Oh, but are we wrong. A hit new single is a hit and is new because of the marketing and PR that the artist’s record label does to brand it that way. Costs to make a hit single (along with a video) can easily rise up to 1 million, 178 thousand dollars.

Here’s the breakdown:

Record writing camp pays $20k - $25k to the best of the best to come and write songs, Rihanna ends up choosing what she likes and each song on the album = $18k

Song writers = $15k

Song producers = $20k

Vocal producers = $10k - $15k

Extra studio fees = $10k

TOTAL COSTS FOR ONE SINGLE: Roughly $78k

A crappy Rihanna song that gets stuck in your head because it’s overplayed: Priceless

Notice the key word, “single.” Rihanna’s song Man Down may have only cost a mere $78,000, chump change obviously, but the costs to make it a HIT single are what sky rocket that $78,000 to over $1.5 million. A million dollars can be attributed to what record producers call the “record rollout”, comprised of marketing, moving artists from place to place, and radio. PR specialists for artists want to make sure that when their single drops, it drops it like it’s HOT. Every radio station, every billboard chart, and every musical television show should be playing their song. Oh, and the music video you ask? Add another $100k to $150k for that as well! The most annoying part about "hit" singles? They aren't popular and on the radio because people like them, they're suddenly popular and suddenly on the radio because their publicists paid for them to be! 

Assuming a hit song by Rihanna costs $1.75 million dollars, I did some research. Savethechildren.org is a website where donors can sponsor a child in a third world country for $28 dollars a month, less than a dollar a day, which provides them with food, clothing, and shelter. With the $1.75 million that it took to create Rihanna’s hit single Man Down, she could be providing for 62,500 children in a underprivileged country for a month. Or, she could be providing for 625 children for 100 months, or almost 8 and a half years each.

To me, this is a huge issue of values in our culture. A bulk of our society would rather spend almost 2 million dollars on a crappy Rihanna song than donate money to try to save the world. The things that people do for pleasure and instant gratification are the things that make them happy, but they are also the things that create a materialistic society. Values are subjective, but the insane amounts of money spent on digitalized, autotuned, songs that sound just like the one before it is absolutely crazy! Sure, the money doesn’t necessarily need to go to savethechildren.org, but isn’t there somewhere else it could be benefitting?