Release Date Speculation

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Downloading, sattelite radio, pandora, subscription music, a la carte buying... a lot has changed since 1987 when it comes to music.

There's a lot of factors that play into album sales, but you would be ignoring all facts to say season doesn't play a part, for all numbers show otherwise. And season has always played a factor since the 80's, but even moreso since the dawn of downloading.

You really believe GOYB would have been a smash hit if the album would have been release in November 2008 instead of Marsh 2009?

Really?
 
I'm not sure anybody is arguing that Boots would have been a smash hit if it were released in 11/08.

I do think that the album would have sold better had it been released in November, absolutely. Release anything 'big' during the Christmas/holiday period, and it'll sell more. Have Best Buy put it out for $9.95 as a Black Friday promotion, and you're boosting sales.

Would the album have been a huge, huge, commercial success ala Atomic Bomb or All that you can't leave behind? no, but would it have sold more? yes.
 
You really believe GOYB would have been a smash hit if the album would have been release in November 2008 instead of Marsh 2009?

Really?

How did you get that from anything I said? :scratch:

NLOTH was pretty big as far as sales in 09 even with a weak lead single and being a spring release, it would have done even better if it were a fall release. Bringing 87 into the conversation doesn't make any sense.
 
I'm thinking NLOTH would have sold better in the autumn what with holiday sales, but given the lead single was Boots, i doubt sales would have improved significantly so.

Plus, as others pointed out, albums not released in autumn - like viva la vida - were bestsellers.

I guess it depends on if u2 believe the holiday sales will improve the next albums general financial success. I'd guess they'd place more importance on having a good single than on the time of year they release, but will still want the added sales of the autumn, given the talk about wanting hits and whatnot.
So to give them that added sales edge, i think it'll be autumn 2012 or 2013.
 
The thing about NLOTH....it felt like more of a Winter album. He'll, it even had songs like White As Snow and Winter on it.

Pop? Now that was a summer album.
 
The thing about NLOTH....it felt like more of a Winter album. He'll, it even had songs like White As Snow and Winter on it.

Pop? Now that was a summer album.

I agree, wasn't NLOTH expected to be released in the Fall 2008? I remember all the hype approaching then Bono wrote the letter (via u2.com) to fans explaining the delay.
 
discotheque went to #2 and then fell off the face of the earth.

if the album is good enough, it will sell regardless of release date.

if the album is medicore or worse? sure... it will sell more if it's released in time for the christmas bump. unless it's crap.

I'm sorry. U2's history just does not bare your theory out.

Most people on this board seem to still agree that NLOTH was a better album than ATYCLB or HTDAAB. ATYCLB not a mediocre album? I'm sorry. It had a strong single, but I can't listen to anyone call songs like New York, Grace, When I Look at The World, Walk On, the album version of Elevation, or the final verse of Kite above average for the band and not smirk. Those songs are weaker than most U2 B-sides. As an album, ATYCLB was the epitome of mediocrity but it had a strong single and then was released at the optimal time of year to maximize sales.

I enjoy the album more than most, but are there many people on this board who think HTDAAB was a better album than NLOTH?

Any disagreement you have to this can only be theoretical. The facts are the facts. When U2 releases albums at any time of year except the fall they underperform by a wide margin.
 
Most people on this board seem to still agree that NLOTH was a better album than ATYCLB or HTDAAB. ATYCLB not a mediocre album? I'm sorry. It had a strong single, but I can't listen to anyone call songs like New York, Grace, When I Look at The World, Walk On, the album version of Elevation, or the final verse of Kite above average for the band and not smirk. Those songs are weaker than most U2 B-sides. As an album, ATYCLB was the epitome of mediocrity but it had a strong single and then was released at the optimal time of year to maximize sales.

It's still subjective though. If one wants to base it on public opinion, I could go off on how many copies of NLOTH I see at second-hand bookstores in my area - compared to the other albums, it certainly rises above them in terms of numbers. Does that mean more people keep ATYCLB because of the non-singles on it? I'm not really sure, but somebody could take that as saying something.

Just because a lot of people don't debate the merits of a band or their albums online doesn't make it a be all, end all, you know? And I'm not even against NLOTH as a whole, although I've been pretty blunt about it's weaker second half on here.
 
But this has always been their MO since they became huge, with the exception of Zooropa. It's always been album-->tour, album-->tour, and Zooropa was only different because they were in the midst of a tour anyway.

So have they been creatively stagnant since The Unforgettable Fire? I think we've seen enough evidence to the contrary even in recent years, the neuroticism and worrying over pleasing every era of fans certainly has limited how much we/the world has gotten to see that creative spark, but they're certainly not The Rolling Stones.

Prior to Popmart (which infringed on the recording sessions), was there ever an example of the band managing the release around a specific tour date/season? Most bands follow an album>tour>album>tour pattern of release (I don't know where I complained about this pattern, only that constant touring prevents them from recording), but I've never seen a band as clinical about their release schedule as U2. There is, quite literally, no room for surprise, and I can imagine that this influences the recording sessions to a degree.

I don't believe U2 consciously places a higher priority on touring than recording new music, but if they were to do that, as hypothesized in the post I quoted, I believe it would be a sign of creative stagnation.
 
It's still subjective though. If one wants to base it on public opinion, I could go off on how many copies of NLOTH I see at second-hand bookstores in my area - compared to the other albums, it certainly rises above them in terms of numbers. Does that mean more people keep ATYCLB because of the non-singles on it? I'm not really sure, but somebody could take that as saying something.

Just because a lot of people don't debate the merits of a band or their albums online doesn't make it a be all, end all, you know? And I'm not even against NLOTH as a whole, although I've been pretty blunt about it's weaker second half on here.

Sure, best is always subjective.

What's not subjective, is that U2 now has a history of weaker sales if they release an album at any time of year except the fall.
 
What's also not subjective is that their biggest selling album ever was released in March.



Facts are facts, indeed.

Not sure which one that is, but it was a long time ago. The last two albums released in spring underperformed.

Honestly, I"m surprised there's any debate about this. I would think it a self-evident point. Anyway, place your bets. The next U2 album will be a fall release. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it, but I would be very shocked to be wrong about this.
 
I actually don't disagree that there is a 99% chance that U2 releases an album in that commercial Halloween-Christmas window. I was just correcting your asserted "fact".

And yes, the Joshua Tree was 25 years ago. But before anyone wants to make that argument, let's have some more actual facts.

Lady Gaga had the #2 best selling album of 2011 worldwide and it came out in May.
Last year Adele was #1 on that list with '21' and even it came out 3 weeks after Christmas.
Beyonce's '4' came out in June and was the 10th best seller worldwide in 2011.

Odds are still better for the Fall but you either have the goods or you don't.
 
The thing that disappoints me about the discourse around here...

I visit many different music forums. And on none of them is there such an issue about lead singles, sales, charts and all the like. I understand it's part of figuring out what U2 might do...but still it's disappointing that it should matter so much. I had to Google to find out what were the biggest selling albums last year. I couldn't have guessed more than half of the top 10. I haven't really cared about sales since I was a teenager. And I think lead singles don't matter all that much, unless you make it a turd.

The bottom line is this - the single biggest 'tell' in the history of Bono's bullshitting is his comments to Greg Kot (in 2005) about how Discotheque needed to be a #1 hit for POP to make sense. It really is the best example of his 'politicking' and excuse making for the creative direction they would later take (and at present when he was speaking) and the 'issue' he was trying to sell in that particular conversation. Which amounted to, his answer to why they were disowning POP (in their setlists and otherwise) and most of the rest of the 90's material. It's just bullshit. You don't release The Fly and Numb back to back as lead singles, with certain success between both of them and them come back and complain that a song that hit #10 (higher than the previous two lead singles) suddenly tanked that album. The problem was the Village People video + the tour + half of that album was substandard. But if Bono can convince some of his fans that he's telling the truth, then he can excuse away why (insert 21st century single here) is so annoyingly poppy and accessible. More or less saying 'Don't you see? This is what we had to do?'. It's just bullshit.

And the most amazing thing is...there are people around here that agree with Bono.
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And it's one of the primary reasons there is so much time spent on discussing Boots as a lead single. Yeah, it was a bad choice. There were probably a lot of bad choices in '09, but I think it's too simple to pin it all on Boots. Although it is an easy argument to make.

I'll say it again, you either have the goods (songs) or you don't. I don't see on forums anywhere else where fans are complaining about a lead single. The problem with NLOTH was that U2 was due for some pop culture comeuppance. And specifically Get On Your Boots didn't 'work' because of the song, the video and the album itself was all over the place. Had they put all their chips in on...something, creatively, it might have stood a better chance. But since they CLEARLY pandered in the middle, they got that kicking - at least in a lot of loud circles. So let's stop the excuse making. It was U2's time to get kicked and they gave people an excuse to do it. Same thing happened with Rattle.

It didn't matter when they released it. It was all inside of the songs. I mean, yeah...maybe it sells X more copies. But who cares?
 
The thing that disappoints me about the discourse around here...

I visit many different music forums. And on none of them is there such an issue about lead singles, sales, charts and all the like. I understand it's part of figuring out what U2 might do...but still it's disappointing that it should matter so much. I had to Google to find out what were the biggest selling albums last year. I couldn't have guessed more than half of the top 10. I haven't really cared about sales since I was a teenager. And I think lead singles don't matter all that much, unless you make it a turd.

The bottom line is this - the single biggest 'tell' in the history of Bono's bullshitting is his comments to Greg Kot (in 2005) about how Discotheque needed to be a #1 hit for POP to make sense. It really is the best example of his 'politicking' and excuse making for the creative direction they would later take (and at present when he was speaking) and the 'issue' he was trying to sell in that particular conversation. Which amounted to, his answer to why they were disowning POP (in their setlists and otherwise) and most of the rest of the 90's material. It's just bullshit. You don't release The Fly and Numb back to back as lead singles, with certain success between both of them and them come back and complain that a song that hit #10 (higher than the previous two lead singles) suddenly tanked that album. The problem was the Village People video + the tour + half of that album was substandard. But if Bono can convince some of his fans that he's telling the truth, then he can excuse away why (insert 21st century single here) is so annoyingly poppy and accessible. More or less saying 'Don't you see? This is what we had to do?'. It's just bullshit.

And the most amazing thing is...there are people around here that agree with Bono.
parrot.jpg


And it's one of the primary reasons there is so much time spent on discussing Boots as a lead single. Yeah, it was a bad choice. There were probably a lot of bad choices in '09, but I think it's too simple to pin it all on Boots. Although it is an easy argument to make.

I'll say it again, you either have the goods (songs) or you don't. I don't see on forums anywhere else where fans are complaining about a lead single. The problem with NLOTH was that U2 was due for some pop culture comeuppance. And specifically Get On Your Boots didn't 'work' because of the song, the video and the album itself was all over the place. Had they put all their chips in on...something, creatively, it might have stood a better chance. But since they CLEARLY pandered in the middle, they got that kicking - at least in a lot of loud circles. So let's stop the excuse making. It was U2's time to get kicked and they gave people an excuse to do it. Same thing happened with Rattle.

It didn't matter when they released it. It was all inside of the songs. I mean, yeah...maybe it sells X more copies. But who cares?

I don't agree with much of that. No Line was an amazing album. I think GOYB is a much better song than Vertigo, but not the right choice for the lead single that time. I loved Stand Up Comedy AND IGCIIDGCT.

But the album didn't connect. I'd say the choices for the first two singles did a bad job selling the album. They both sounded like work we'd already heard from U2. And yeah, I think the time of year was a negative on top of that.
 
I think @u2 discusses the importance of lead singles as much as we do...
Anyway, i think people have their own justifications for placing importance on singles, they're not just copying Bono.

I agree that the lead single isn't the sole 'make or break' factor in deciding the success of an album, and i agree the village people video, and indeed the rest of the album helped as well. (Don't get me wrong, i think Pop is great, and featured an attitude that i didn't see in the 00's albums, but relative to Achtung baby, i always thought the songs were just relatively sub-par, even before i found out that the album didn't do so well.)

But i think Get on Your Boots still did a lot of damage. When i talked to casual u2 fans after the single release, they didn't just say they hated the song, they said the hated u2's 'new direction', and were very unenthusiastic about what would come next. Hell, even in u2 forums, i remember people panicking that the whole album would sound like Boots! So yeah, regardless of what Bono says, i'm certain that negative public opinion of Boots discouraged people from buying the album.

Although, having said that, i also think the next two singles weren't exactly on the level of magnificent or vertigo either, and the marketing for the whole album could've been a bit better (the music videos were embarrassingly generic, besides the cartoon one).

Had there been other, better singles, and imo if the production was better, and the album more coherent, i think it could've done well regardless of boots. But from what i saw, having a single like that really didn't help!
 
After Boots it was essential they followed it up with a solid gold single in order to stand any chance of reversing the albums fortunes. They could still have salvaged the campaign even after it became apparent they'd shot themselves in the foot.

A poor first single doesn't have to be disastrous as long as you've got another couple of aces up your sleeve just waiting for the greenlight.

NLOTH didn't have this. It's no surprise Magnificent got lost in the din of the pop charts and Go Crazy just seemed to test people's patience as far as I could see.

What they really needed was another One (MOS doesn't really fit the bill IMO), something with enough of a 'classic' ring to it to win people around again.

I agree with U2DMfan that by the time NLOTH rolled around the knives were out. Each and every single decade of the bands career has followed exactly the same pattern, maybe we should have seen it coming.

To be honest, I was amazed Vertigo did as well as it did back in 2005, I'm still a bit baffled in 2012. The whole thing seemed so obvious and lacking in the bands usual substance and invention. No other single has ever felt quite so pandering IMO, U2 always seemed a bit better than that.

You could almost say the same thing about Beautiful Day, but at least that song has a purity and sincerity to it. I put HTDAAB's success at least partially down to the wave of goodwill they'd been riding ever since 2000.

I don't know how the band can avoid this end-of-decade backlash effect that they keep running headlong into. What we can say though is that R&H, Pop and NLOTH, all suffer from the same fundamental flaws; a confused/obscure mindset, no clear through-line and variable song quality.
 
I think people here focus more on singles and sales because that's what U2 do. They care a great deal about sales and singles. They want to be "relevant". So when you're discussing U2's future it's normal to focus on those things as well because they matter for the band. If we didn't discuss these things then we wouldn't be discussing anything at all (which might be better now that I think about it :wink:).
 
the idea that No Line, or Pop for that matter, failed because they weren't released in the fall is comical.

No kidding. I can't believe people are even arguing that seriously.

To quote Sigourney Weaver from Aliens....Did IQ's drop while I was away? The notion that the time of year one of the biggest rock acts in the world released their record had anything more than a marginal impact on sales (one way or the other) is specious. And anyone who throws out a bunch of statistics in this regard based on prior release dates is seriously confusing correlation with causation. Would a holiday release date sold a few more records? Sure...but the problems with the record (in terms of sales) were just that the public didn't receive it as well as U2 would have liked...for whatever reason...not when it was released. If the album had been better received by the general public it would have sold better, period.

Moreover, the oft-repeated conventional wisdom notion Boots, weak as it is, is primarily responsible for NLOTH's sales is ridiculous as well. It's an easy thing to say (and U2 has definitely said it), but again, had the rest of the record been stronger, it would have sold better.

The notion that piracy had an impact is more legitimate, but really doesn't explain all of it, when so many of U2's contemporaries are still able to outsell them 2-3X.

As for the general topic of album sales around here, I think it's a legitimate one, since we all know how well a record performs (commercially and critically) has a serious impact on U2 and their choices with a follow-up. Every U2 album is a direct reaction to the last one, and this time around it will be no different. In this case, I fear that means we're going to get something closer to Bomb next time around, regretably.
 
I think IQs did fall. Or maybe they just stayed where they often are around here. I didn't catch anyone saying NLOTH or POP "failed" because of what time of year they were released. They underperformed.

And they did.

Even with GOYB as a lead single, sales would have been better with a fall release.
 
Originally Posted by DevilsShoes
NLOTH didn't have this. It's no surprise Magnificent got lost in the din of the pop charts and Go Crazy just seemed to test people's patience as far as I could see.

I think most of you are missing a potentially crucial piece of the puzzle RE NLOTH sales..

Did U2’s Latest Album Flop Because of a Secret Radio-Station Boycott? -- Vulture

Since its release in March, numerous theories have been advanced as to why U2's No Line on the Horizon has failed to make a dent on either the Billboard charts (it has yet to go platinum) or the American collective consciousness. Some blame the record company for accidentally leaking the record early, some pin the blame on a lack of support from Apple, and others, to be blunt, chalk it up to its being a pretty boring album. However, an artists'-rights group called musicFIRST just filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that something more nefarious is afoot. Namely, that radio stations boycotted the single of an unnamed artist — one that is widely believed to be U2 — because of a recent spat regarding the future of royalty payments.

The filing alleges that after Bono the unnamed artist publicly lent his support to a new effort to try and get terrestrial radio stations to pay musicians royalties similar to what songwriters currently receive, "several stations within a major radio broadcast group notified the artist's label that they would no longer play his single on the air."
 
Nick66 said:
The notion that piracy had an impact is more legitimate, but really doesn't explain all of it, when so many of U2's contemporaries are still able to outsell them 2-3X.
.

Which contemporaries out sold them in 2009?
 
Which contemporaries out sold them in 2009?

So I looked it up Nick. Only 2 people outsold them by 2x and 2 by 3x:

Lady GaGa and Andrea Bocelli hit the 2 million mark and Susan Boyle and Taylor Swift hit the 3 million mark. None of which I would consider contermporaries and ALL of which have a large demorgraphic that do not fit into the illegal downloading demographic age. Preteens and boomer beyond age groups.
 
I think IQs did fall. Or maybe they just stayed where they often are around here. I didn't catch anyone saying NLOTH or POP "failed" because of what time of year they were released. They underperformed.

And they did.

Even with GOYB as a lead single, sales would have been better with a fall release.

Well, I certainly didn't use the word "failed" either. I'm merely observing that there's no credible or conclusive data that the time of year NLOTH was released had anything to do with it "under performing". You're some how assuming that because previous U2 albums sold better b/c they were released in the fall that the same would follow for this record, ignoring all of the variables...the most important one being the quality of the music.

Again, you're confusing correlation with causation. Just because the rooster crows every time the sun comes up doesn't mean he's causing it.
 
So I looked it up Nick. Only 2 people outsold them by 2x and 2 by 3x:

Lady GaGa and Andrea Bocelli hit the 2 million mark and Susan Boyle and Taylor Swift hit the 3 million mark. None of which I would consider contermporaries and ALL of which have a large demorgraphic that do not fit into the illegal downloading demographic age. Preteens and boomer beyond age groups.

Well, we can quibble about whether or not those particular artists are as vulnerable to piracy as U2 (I'll concede some artists are more susceptible to this than others), but that's really beside the point isn't it? I was just speculating that piracy may be one reason NLOTH under performed. Why some other artists can continue to outsell U2 IMO has more to do with contemporary musical tastes than any other factor.
 
Well, I certainly didn't use the word "failed" either. I'm merely observing that there's no credible or conclusive data that the time of year NLOTH was released had anything to do with it "under performing". You're some how assuming that because previous U2 albums sold better b/c they were released in the fall that the same would follow for this record, ignoring all of the variables...the most important one being the quality of the music.

Again, you're confusing correlation with causation. Just because the rooster crows every time the sun comes up doesn't mean he's causing it.

I don't care if its causation or correlation. There will never be enough U2 albums for us to have a statistically relevant sample. But with millions of dollars on the line and the examples of 2 of the last 4 albums (IMO the better of the 4) all underperforming, I would be shocked if U2 ever took the financial risk of releasing an album at any time of the year except fall again. McG would be guilty of malpractice for letting them try again for at least a decade.

But there are very good reasons why an album released in the fall is likely, all things being equal, of selling better than one released in the spring.
 
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