Reel Content: How Movies Transcend the Theater (Part 4)

Reel Content: How Movies Transcend the Theater (Part 4)

Music and movie scenes are as about compatible as peanut butter and jelly. Case in point: Titanic and Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” or Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and The Bodyguard – how could you possibly hear the song without thinking of the movie?

Some of the best-selling albums in music are soundtracks. Pitch Perfect, Les Miserables and The Great Gatsby have all generated strong soundtrack sales in 2013, selling 806,000 units, 644,000 units and 408,000 units, respectively. Pitch Perfect lead Anna Kendrick released “Cups” as a single from the Pitch Perfect movie soundtrack, which has landed a top 10 spot in sales and garnered more than 92,000 spins on U.S. radio to boot.

Titanic and The Bodyguard are two of the top-performing soundtracks in history and have sold 10 million and 12 million albums, respectively. Some soundtracks can generate strong sales ever decades after the movies make it to Netflix. For example, the soundtrack for the Sound of Music continues to sell more than 500 album copies each week, and Prince’s Purple Rain has averaged more than 1,000 units each week for the last 20 years.