At the retail level, there had been a major shift from specialty record shops to Retailers gave an album only about 90 days from its release date to generate meaningful consumer demand; if that failed to occur, they exercised their return privilege. Therefore, in order to ensure high demand by an album's release date, sufficient publicity and promotion had to occur months in advance. "From a financial point of view," Brown said, "that means incurring all your recording, preproduction, and man- ufacturing costs six months or more before you will ever see any return. To keep an album available in the stores, a record label had to sell at least 50 percent of the total forecast sales in the first three months after the release date, and perhaps reach 75 percent in the first year. After that, sales might fall off quickly, with most of the remaining inventory sold the following year.