Also interesting:
Sales this week: 28,122
Sales last week: 439 (street date violations)
Total sales the past 2 weeks: 28,561
That still leaves a gap of 260 copies. This is most likely the # of the advance vinyl pressing copies put on sale at Amoeba & Looney Tunes in late September.
U2 - Songs Of Innocence
Croatia: 1
France: 1-1
Netherlands: 1
Czech: 1
Spain: 1
Portugal: 1
Austria: 2
Singapore: 2
Sweden: 2
Ireland: 2
Greece: 2
Germany: 2
Switzerland: 3
UK: 6
Australia: 7
Estonia: 7
USA: 9
Finland: 10
Taiwan [Int.]: 12
Argentina: 14
Japan: 17
Opened #1 in 6 countries.
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Poland 13.10.2014 - 19.10.2014:
Songs Of Innocence: #1
Achtung Baby: #31
Italy is number 1 and had really good sales, 40,000 or so.
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Not bad. How many albums did the #1 sell?World Wide sales are in.....opens up at #2 with 195,000 albums sold
Worldwide total:
Week1-28k
Week2-195k(223k total)
For comparison purposes, NLOTH opened world wide with 1.18 million, Bomb 1.8 million.
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Not bad. How many albums did the #1 sell?
It was Florida Georgia Line and they sold 216k. Those totals are from Canada and the US(I'm thinking those were the only countries it was released to).
That article is ridiculous.
While they acknowledge declining CD sales and the fact that SOI was free for a month, they say SOI failed to sell well and put the blame on U2.
Really?
So you think having a FREE album, that was fully downloaded 26M times and partially downloaded 81M times just had a minor affect on album sales?
Anyone who thinks this is truly biased and should be ignored.
This serves as my proof. The #1 album worldwide sold only 216K albums. This album was NOT given away for free. It did not have 26M downloads. Yet it outsold U2's release by only 21K albums. And if one combines Weeks 1 and 2 (as Week 1 was only a few days), U2 technically have the best selling album this week worldwide.
My view is the opposite of that author. DESPITE having 26M FREE downloads, U2 still manages to hit #2 on the worldwide charts in sales. THAT is an accomplishment - not the fact that this album sold less than HTDAAB or NLOTH. That was always a given.
Furthermore, if one of the SOI songs breaks through, SOI may ultimately sell very well, so...
UK down 7 spots to #13 in week 2.
With 56% in, Hits is showing SOI holding onto a respectable number 16 on the US charts. They put them at number 11 vs. Billboards #9 showing last week, so maybe they will hang in the top 15 in the US this time around.
Actually a little better than I had anticipated.
We shall see what Wednesday brings for Billboard numbers.
I expect a 60%+ drop in sales (maybe even 70%) in week 2 given the "padding" of preorders in week 1 and the surge of hardcore fans going out week one. I don't know what that would translate chart position wise but I would think in the 20s at least. If they maintain within the top 20, I would be impressed.
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I wonder how SOI would have sold without all the free download shenanigans. Something tells me it still wouldn't have achieved Gold certification. But at least it would have entered the chart relatively high, maybe #1. And it would have been eligible for the Grammys, which has traditionally been good to U2. As is, SOI is swiftly falling off the map. What did Iggy Pop say? "They gave it away free before it had a chance to flop"? Sounds about right
I wonder how SOI would have sold without all the free download shenanigans. Something tells me it still wouldn't have achieved Gold certification. But at least it would have entered the chart relatively high, maybe #1. And it would have been eligible for the Grammys, which has traditionally been good to U2. As is, SOI is swiftly falling off the map. What did Iggy Pop say? "They gave it away free before it had a chance to flop"? Sounds about right
Everything about this post is wrong.
First, if they didn't do the free give away, you would have to consider what the alternate release method would have been? which makes speculation about it almost impossible.
Their last 3 albums have opened up between 350 and 600k. So if it was straight traditional, I have to agree with doctorwho and say it probably would have been in the 300's IF Miracle was still the lead single, released traditionally. And most certainly would have gone Gold within a month or so.
BUT,
What if they had done a different Apple tie-in (Like I was wishing for)
Say they put out EBW for free on iTunes, and because of Apples 40th anniversary, sold SOI for $4.40 for a couple weeks, or a month...
Then have Apple put together an amazing commercial, heartfelt with beautiful imagery, with EBW as the music. Catching the publics attention and making EBW the new classic that it is.
They may have sold upwards of 600k. You just don't know. There are a dozen other scenerios that could have played out as well, all yielding different results.
But in any way it was done, other than giving it away for free for 5 weeks, it would definitely hit Gold, and platinum at some point down the road.
Now we have about 30 million people with the album in their libraries... Even if a quarter of them really care and kinda like it or love it, that's about 8 million people, and it's only been a month and a half.
With streaming becoming the new thing, album charts like this will probably cease to exist (as we know them) within a couple years.
Gold and Platinum will mean nothing and things will most likely be charted on streams, youtube views, downloads, facebook and webpage hits, etc...
I think the band knows this and unlike the really stupid comments by Iggy Pop, they are succeeding in having people hear their music, and that in the end is what seems to be important to them.
Iggy can sell his 20,000 albums this next time and then sit and wonder if HIS is a flop?? or maybe the landscape has shifted so dramatically that the term flop, only applies to the old method of charting things.
So the news at Hits (USA) is not too bad.
They have SOI at number 24, down from 11.
Now the interesting thing is, that it actually had the smallest percentage decline of any of last weeks debuts. Only 48%, where Seger and Florida/Georgia dropped 60 and 70% respectively.
Also important to note that there are 10 new debuts in the top 20! So for them to only drop 13 spots ain't bad.
Probably won't stay in the top 20 on Billboard but may be close
Usual week 2 drops for U2 and most big releases is in the 60-70% range because their first week is front loaded with preorders and the fan base. A 50% drop with NO promotion in the US is actual a very impressive hold.
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I'm surprised the album sold at all.
If -let's say- Interpol would've done the same and give YOU their album for free... would you then go and pay for it anyway? Sure in here everybody wants to have the (U2) album to complete the collection, but otherwise why?
It wasn't even Radiohead's "pay what you think it's worthy", which is like free but you'd feel bad if you don't pay anything.
It wasn't a "freeware" thing like you can download the first couple of minutes of every song, or you can download a couple of songs for free and pay for the rest.
No, it was 100% free. They wanted you to have it for free. They even got in trouble for giving you the album for free.
The fact that whatever number of people was willing to pay for it anyway is impressive by itself. Being top 2 in the world for one week is just amazing.