Melissa Gorga’s ‘I Just Wanna’ Music Video; Melissa May Have Sold Out Her Husband’s Family for Less Than $20,000 from iTunes Sales of Her Songs

October 13, 2012 73 Comments

Melissa’s music isn’t going to bail out the Gorgas from their financial mess; in fact, it may have just sunk them further into their financial pit.

Kim Zolciak’s ‘Tardy for the Party’ sold 101,000 copies; Melissa Gorga’s ‘On Display’ (her most popular song) sold only 8,000 copies (figures from September 14, 2011).

Real Housewives Song Sales:

Kim Zolciak (Atlanta)
“Tardy for the Party” – 101,000 downloads

Kandi Burruss (Atlanta)
“Fly Above” – 55,000*

Countess LuAnn (New York City)
“Money Can’t Buy You Class” – 19,000

Melissa Gorga (New Jersey)
“On Display” – 8,000

Gretchen Rossi (Orange County)
“Nothing Without You” – 5,000*

Danielle Staub (New Jersey)
“Real Close” – 3,000

Simon van Kempen (New York City)
“I Am Real” – 1,000

Michaele Salahi (Washington, D.C.)
“Bump It” – 122

Source: Nielsen SoundScan | * Includes physical copies

‘On Display’, perhaps Melissa’s most popular song, sold 8,000 copies as if September 14, 2011 (she has since re-released it twice, once as a ‘radio remix’ and then as an ‘extended remix’ — see below). I’m not sure how much of the profit is shared with iTunes and whoever else, but at 99 cents each, Melissa didn’t make much off of that one [Trixy-Lou, June 15, 2012, Bravo Message Board].

In response, Lola16 posted on Bravo’s Message Board the following:

According to something called Music Biz Academy -

Artist iTunes Royalty (without wholesale markup)

$0.99 download single song price to the consumer less $0.29 to Apple

left $0.70 x 12% (net artist net rate) = $0.084 cents per download

So Melissa only made $672 off of On Display? Ouch. I guess that is why the other housewives are smart enough to do it for fun and not as a career that they sink all of their money into. [Trixy-Lou, June 15, 2012, Bravo Message Board]

So Melissa sold out her husband’s family (take note it is not her family that is being destroyed) for a $65,000 season 4 Bravo salary (can’t confirm this; just was posted here in a comment without a link; Joe’s salary was $45,000 for season 4), and what looks like less than $10,000 netted from iTunes sales for her four songs.

Melissa has stated many times on Twitter and in interviews that her songs have made it to #4 on the iTunes charts, but that is a lie.  And she made these claims before releasing her best selling iTunes song, ‘I Just Wanna’, featuring Santino Noir (who wrote the song). She may have reached a better ranking with the dance/pop category of iTunes, but that would have been temporary and probably helped by purchases from Joe Gorga and other family members so that the song would spike on the charts. Here are here iTunes rankings for her releases:

Song Title iTunes Ranking for Paid Downloads as of 21-Oct-12 Release Date
On Display – Main 62,363 13-Aug-11
How Many Times 69,456 29-Apr-12
Rockstar 32,998 10-Jun-12
I Just Wanna 11,159 9-Sep-12
On Display – Radio Remix 72,044 13-Aug-11
On Display – Extended Remix 164,478 13-Aug-11

Melissa Gorga was interviewed in June 2011 by Lisa New England at HubPages. She asked Melissa to tell her more about her “singing career, future plans, anything you would like my readers to know or promote about yourself.” Melissa indicated that she had four singles she would be releasing, so she had them ready well before her first season on RHONJ. Melissa said:

“I have four singles that I will be releasing that are Pop/Dance. I am really proud of each song and worked so hard on making them. I am just finishing up my web site melissagorga.co and I will be blogging on there once a week, listing my appearances, posting pictures, and when my music is ready you will be able to purchase my songs there. Its a really exciting time! We are also working on a company that is going to be incredible; its called ProveWorld.”

[They were trying to raise cash with an Internet reality-show site called "Prove World" where celebrities would pay Joe to interact with fans and fans would pay to interact with them in online video chats.]


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Filed under iTunes Sales of Melissa's Songs, Music Video 'I Just Wanna'