Sell 3/4 OF A Million Records and You're A Failure?!

This one is actually a little old news, back from the beginning of the month. Taylor Hicks, the winner of the only season of American Idol I've watched, was released from his recording contract. A lot has been made of the fact that Taylor was the first Idol winner that did not sell over a million copies of his post-Idol album. If I remember the numbers right though he sold around 750,000 copies of his album. Now that's still a lot of albums. In today's market there is becoming fewer and fewer artists that can sell a million copies of an album. What ever happened to helping an artist grow and find his fans. If you don't have a blockbuster with the first album you're gone. It used to be a Record Company was in it for the long haul with the artist, they were willing to work with them and try to grow their fan base. John Mellencamp didn't have a hit album until his sixth or seventh (I forget exactly which one) album. Where would he be if they had dropped him after his first album bombed? I said it before when Taylor first came out with his album that I look on him as an artist that will grow, I think that he had more long term potential than a lot of the other Idols that had bigger debut albums and will go on to smaller ones in the long run. I don't think Taylor's first album was the best that could have been put out, I think the Record Company tried to over produce him. Taylor says he's still going to record, now he'll do it on his own, so maybe this is for the best. Without a Big Boss telling him how to record he can do it his own way.