New Business Structures for Keeping Cast Albums Alive

The cast recording for the Broadway show The Book of Mormon ranked 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.com had a four-day sale of the album at $1.99), there have not been many successful cast albums in recent years. This article discusses 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.