Yo my ninjas, in my everlasting mission to put the numbers in perspective, let's look at these future numbers a little more closely.
This is futures 2nd album after a relatively successful first campaign. So his budget is probably in the mid to low six figures.
He has a pretty heavy hitting production line up including The Runners, Mike Will Made it, Sonny Digital, Boi 1da and Metro Boomin, all producers who have charted, most have charted several times, and a few who've had top 10s. In other words, they're expensive. I'd say 5-10 stacks a beat is a conservative estimate, if not just flat out low, but I'll give him the benefit of having strong relationships. $7500 x 12 = $90,000 at the absolute low end estimate on production.
He's got Pusha T, Pharrell, Kanye West, Drake and Wiz Khalifa as guests. Kanye and Drake have to be getting at least 30k at the absolute lowest. We also know Kanye appeared in a music video, which is extra $$$. We're looking at another $90k for features, again a low ball estimate.
So we're talking $180k just for production and features, not mentioning recording, videos, travel, marketing and promo, and his own pocket money. His total budget could easily have been $400k +.
After all deductions the label is making roughly $4-5 per copy sold, so at 45k first week, we're looking at $180k - $225k recouped first week. This album needs to make it to 100k just to break even. I think it's safe to say Future is sweating a little right now. This is a bad first week, and could potentially be an out and out disaster.
EDIT: the homie
@L&HH reminded me that future is most likely in a 360 deal, so I need to account for his touring and other income.
so it looks like the Label gets 10% of touring after expenses, and 10%-50% of any other type of income like merchandising, etc...
Future is about to go out on a 45 date tour to support the album, so if he's doing 50k a show that's $2.25 million gross (honestly I think that's a bit high). Then you have to deduct expenses, like travel, hotel, staff, stage props, etc... I'd say we're looking at least a million + in expenses. So say he walks away with 1.2 million from the tour, the label takes $120,000 from the tour.
So the question is this: how much does the label want to make on a project to consider it a success? If they spent 400-500k on future, if they make back 750k are they happy, or do they want to double up and hit a mil? Based of my rough estimates, Future still has a uphill battle to recoup, but if his album can get up to 100k units and his tour is successful, and say there's some other revenues we don't know about it seems the label will be in that 750k-900k range... Not bad I guess
