As fans wait impatiently for "The Hunger Games" to open in movie theaters on Friday, an accompanying collection of music is already burning up the iTunes sales chart, thanks to strategies that haven't been seen much since the 1990s.
The soundtrack—"The Hunger Games (Songs from District 12 and Beyond)"—includes 16 songs by big-name acts from the worlds of alternative rock and country, including Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire, the Decemberists and Miranda Lambert.
The songs were written and recorded for the album, but only three of them actually play during the science-fiction film targeting teens—and even those come during the closing credits.
Officially, the collection is a "soundtrack companion album." A separate album of the movie's score comes out on Tuesday.
Collections of songs "inspired by" a given film were common during the 1990s, when soundtracks were a huge part of the music business.
Sales of soundtracks have declined 79% since reaching a peak of 61.5 million in 1998, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As a result, the collections are much less of a priority for movie studios and record labels alike.
Soundtracks from the four "Twilight" teen-vampire movies were successful but didn't come close to older movie soundtracks like "The Bodyguard" or "Dirty Dancing." The "Twilight" soundtracks, which feature a variety of popular rock bands, have sold a combined 5.1 million copies, according to SoundScan.
While "Twilight" and "Hunger Games" share an aesthetic and fan base, the soundtracks reflect different approaches to film music. Nearly all the songs on the "Twilight" collections played during the films, and numerous fan websites offer indexes of the scenes where the songs appear.
"Hunger Games," like "Twilight," can tap into an existing audience. The film is based on a series of young-adult novels that has 23.5 million copies in print.
"Just when you're ready to give up on the soundtrack business, something like 'The Hunger Games' comes along and you've got to move all the chips to the middle of the table and go all-in," says Monte Lipman, chief executive of Universal Republic records, the label distributing the album.
One cut from the album, Ms. Swift's "Safe and Sound," went on sale online in late December and has sold 735,000 copies, according to SoundScan.
The full "Hunger Games" album sold an estimated 150,000 copies on Tuesday, its first day on sale, putting it on track for a No. 1 debut when weekly rankings come out next Wednesday.
People in the entertainment business estimate that Universal Republic, part of Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, spent as much as $1 million to produce the album, including paying movie studio Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. for the rights.
Mr. Lipman says the label's outlay for the project was "competitive—on the high end of what you'd expect for a soundtrack." He adds: "The franchise was so incredibly valuable, it was a very easy deal to justify. "
Tracy McKnight, Lions Gate's head of music, called the estimated figure "speculation."
In the boom years, there was a feeding frenzy. "Before you could finish saying the title of the movie, a record label executive was asking, 'Can we do the soundtrack?'" recalls Robert Kraft, president of Twentieth Century Fox's music division. Fox is part of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.
The "Spider-Man" films spawned a trilogy of "Music From and Inspired By" albums. The first, in 2002, reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The third one, however, didn't fare so well, topping out at No. 33 when it was released in 2007.
That downward trajectory mirrors a broader reality. The dynamics of the industry have shifted in ways that hurt soundtrack sales even more than overall album sales, which have declined 58% since 2000, according to SoundScan.
On iTunes, fans can buy only the songs they want from a soundtrack. The same is true for all albums, of course. But soundtracks often include older songs that many fans already own. The popularity of "inspired by" soundtracks also waned as fans started to feel burned when they bought albums that included music that wasn't from the movie.
"The Hunger Games" is set in a dystopian future where 24 randomly selected young people must fight each other, gladiator-style, in an annual televised battle to the death. The heroine of the novel and film hails from the fictitious District 12, which resembles Appalachia.
Mr. Lipman says that the theme of soundtrack meetings was "What does music from the Appalachian mountains sound like 300 years from now?"
To that end, director Gary Ross enlisted music producer T Bone Burnett, whose "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack was a smash hit in 2000—an unlikely feat for a collection of old-time favorites like "Keep on the Sunny Side" and "In the Jailhouse Now."
A Lions Gate spokeswoman said Messrs. Burnett and Ross were unavailable for interviews.
The resulting album ranges from the Secret Sisters' traditional, acoustic-guitar backed ballad "Tomorrow Will Be Kinder" to rapper Kid Cudi's dissonant "The Ruler and the Killer."
"We wanted to make a record that was a good listening experience and that was true to the vision of the books and the films," says Lions Gate's Ms. McKnight.
"We have to stand behind the storytelling," says Mr. Lipman. "If it makes sense to save the songs for the closing credits, so be it."
Mr. Lipman believes "Hunger Games" fans will gravitate to the album. "The two and a half hours in the theater, it's not enough," he says. "They want something to help remember the experience, whether it's a T-shirt or a lunchbox or the soundtrack."
Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com
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