Possible Reason for Discrepancies??

[doctorwho]

I came across this article discussing the new Britney Spears' CD vs. the new Eagles' CD.

The Eagles' first studio release in 28 years, "Long Road Out of Eden," sold about 711,000 copies last week, according to preliminary data released by tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan. Spears sold a modest 290,000 copies of her album, "Blackout."

In a normal world, the Eagles would be No. 1 and Spears No. 2, but the Eagles album was available only through Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which traditionally does not report data to SoundScan. Additionally, trade publication Billboard does not allow such exclusive releases to appear on its flagship Billboard 200 chart, which is compiled from SoundScan data.

That meant Spears would have been No. 1 upon the release of final SoundScan figures on Wednesday morning. However, Billboard said late Tuesday that it had changed its rule and the Eagles would indeed be No. 1. The rule was imposed at the request of retailers and labels shortly after Billboard started using SoundScan data in 1991.

The full article is located here.

While Billboard may re-examine numbers (from places like Wal-Mart) and chart accordingly, it's obvious that SoundScan doesn't get data from them.

I do believe SoundScan still estimates numbers to some extent. I mean, how can they ignore 700K+ copies sold of a CD, even if it is to just one retailer? But this changes our thinking where we felt that by now SoundScan accounted for over 95% of sales. Wal-Mart is a huge chain and they probably account for a tremendous amount of sales. If none of those sales are being reported to SoundScan each week, this would explain why we often see albums certified by the RIAA as having sold a million or two more to retailers, but their SoundScan numbers are low.

"Achtung Baby" provides the perfect example of this. Per SoundScan, the album has sold 5.3M copies. But the RIAA has it certified as 8X Platinum! There's no way stores would keep an extra 3M copies of this album on their shelves. That difference is probably due to CD club sales, online sales and places like Wal-Mart.

Anyway, just thought this was interesting.

 

[mikeuk]

Good point Doc - but my take is that normally walmart sales are taken into account, but in terms of exclusive deals such as this they are ignored in some respects - but then again >>>>>???


A number of us have previously exchanged views iro Joshua Tree sales - and even with the anniversary re-launch we still await official figures. I think some estimates are way too high here _ you know who you are- but I think sales are probably now around 23m and shipments around 25m , but interested in your view.

Mike

 

[Danny Boy]

Very interesting given that Walmart is the #1 music retailer in the US with roughly 16% of all CD sales.

If the musical taste of Walmart shoppers is significantly different from, say, Best Buy customers, it could really skew sales results.

Also interesting because I was in Walmart yesterday and they had zero copies of Joshua Tree. They either sold out on Black Friday, or never had it to begin with.