Catman
Rock n' Roll Doggie
KUEFC09U2 said:
Billboard said a few days ago
Hits Week 14
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Billboard said a few days ago
Sleep Over Jack
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CPTLCTYGOOFBALL said:
ybird3k
War Child
FINAL #45 26,214 -54%
not great, but then almost every album in the top 50 had a big decrease from last week
not great, but then almost every album in the top 50 had a big decrease from last week
mikeuk
War Child
ybird3k said:
yes, but this is a MASSIVE DROP in terms of chart position !
Mike
I hope Soldatti has the soundscan figures tomorrow. If they are the same as HITS, then this is a very poor week.
ATYCLB in WEEK 14 sold: 44,000 copies.
In the second week after the Grammy awards, ATYCLB sold: 74,000 copies.
ATYCLB did not fall to sales of 26,000 until its 27th week when it was at #50 on the chart.
With BOMB already falling to 26,000 in sales in only its 14th week, and two more weeks to go before any HALL OF FAME effect is seen, the album is seriously falling behind the pace set by albums like Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and ATYCLB.
The tour can stabilize sales, but it will probably not increase them as seen by what happened on the Elevation tour. Most people going to the shows on the Arena tour already have the album. In smaller and less toured markets though, a concert such as this can get more of the media spotlight which could have a greater impact on sales in these smaller market cities.
What the album needs here in the USA is a strong single. It does not have to be a massive top 10 airplay smash, but another one with airplay similar to Vertigo which peaked at #31 mainly do to airplay and stayed around for a good while.
I'm not sure if many are aware of this, but Vertigo has an equal amount of weeks in the top 40 as "With Or Without You" or "ISHFWILF" in the USA.
In Europe, the situation is fantastic with the album at #2. On the World Chart, U2 should come in at around 130,000 sales for the week or higher if there has been an increase in Europe or other places.
The album may be hurt by the attempt to push "All Because Of You" then suddenly backing away from it when it was not able to crack the HOT 100. Now their starting over again with "Sometimes". This song could do great with U2's casual fanbase, which is in its 30s, and may not have purchased BOMB yet. It will be interesting to see if it appeals to the Highschool and College crowd the way that "ONE" did back in 1992.
ATYCLB in WEEK 14 sold: 44,000 copies.
In the second week after the Grammy awards, ATYCLB sold: 74,000 copies.
ATYCLB did not fall to sales of 26,000 until its 27th week when it was at #50 on the chart.
With BOMB already falling to 26,000 in sales in only its 14th week, and two more weeks to go before any HALL OF FAME effect is seen, the album is seriously falling behind the pace set by albums like Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, and ATYCLB.
The tour can stabilize sales, but it will probably not increase them as seen by what happened on the Elevation tour. Most people going to the shows on the Arena tour already have the album. In smaller and less toured markets though, a concert such as this can get more of the media spotlight which could have a greater impact on sales in these smaller market cities.
What the album needs here in the USA is a strong single. It does not have to be a massive top 10 airplay smash, but another one with airplay similar to Vertigo which peaked at #31 mainly do to airplay and stayed around for a good while.
I'm not sure if many are aware of this, but Vertigo has an equal amount of weeks in the top 40 as "With Or Without You" or "ISHFWILF" in the USA.
In Europe, the situation is fantastic with the album at #2. On the World Chart, U2 should come in at around 130,000 sales for the week or higher if there has been an increase in Europe or other places.
The album may be hurt by the attempt to push "All Because Of You" then suddenly backing away from it when it was not able to crack the HOT 100. Now their starting over again with "Sometimes". This song could do great with U2's casual fanbase, which is in its 30s, and may not have purchased BOMB yet. It will be interesting to see if it appeals to the Highschool and College crowd the way that "ONE" did back in 1992.
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No worries
HTDAAB may be off the pace of some of U2's best sellers over the last several weeks, but it's still U2's fastest selling album, and it sold 840K in the U.S. and 1.84M Worldwide in it's first week! Only one album did better than that in 2004, and I think it was Norah Jones with a scant difference with her album selling around 1.91M.
In an article dated December 28, 2002, 13+ months after the release of ATYCLB, album sales were quoted at 3.1M in the U.S. and 10M worldwide. With the 2002 Grammy "avalanche", the 2002 Superbowl performance, and the 9/11 effect, ATYCLB went on to sell another 1M in the U.S. and about 1M ROW. Remember, it was released in November of 2000. As Bono said recently, the secret to having successful album sales is to make it last over two Christmas Seasons. They did it with AB, missed the deadline with POP, but did it again with ATYCLB and set the stage for HTDAAB to pull it off, too. It's a proven strategy.
In 3.5 months, HTDAAB is being credited with 8.5M sold (shipped) while we know that actual sales to consumers are just under 7M. That is incredible! The tour will help U2 maintain sales, as the reviews for this show should be highly favorable if the massive effects can match the music, which should be great. Also, this tour will push ROW sales even higher as the buzz in Europe has been great. U2 did a lot of rearranging for this first leg, and it might not help sales as much in the U.S., but if the 3rd leg indeed does come back to N.A. in the September - November time frame, then the album will again have a buzz for a 2nd Christmas Season, not to mention Grammy nominations, which boost sales, and then Grammy performances and wins, which boost sales. I think HTDAAB has an excellent chance at "Album of the Year", which won't be awarded until February of 2005!
The other supporting effort is from singles, and U2 gets an A+ for Vertigo, but an F for ABOY. Sometimes is a great song that is doing well despite more bungled opportunities from U2 or the record company...probably the latter. We still have no video in the U.S., and I can only fathom that is due to ABOY actually still climbing both the MTV and VH1 video charts, even though it's fallen off the radio. Perhaps they are waiting for the ABOY video to peak, which usually means a very quick disappearance from the charts, before releasing the Sometimes video. I think the split releases of singles around the world is a bad idea and I hope this is the end of it.
Now, if Sometimes flops, and album sales do not rise with the R&R induction & start of the tour in the U.S., then I would agree that HTDAAB may not reach 4M+ sales in the U.S. 18 months after it's release. However, based on the ROW popularity, I think HTDAAB is a lock to match or surpass ATYCLB's 12M in Global sales.
Another unfortunate phenomena is that album sales, as a whole, have declined SIGNIFICANTLY every year over the past 4 years, and 2005 is already running over 10% behind 2004 industry sales! That's a lot of albums, especially when we are talking about sales in the millions. The 16-25 demographic gets just about all their music off the internet...hell, I do and I'm 37. Itunes and other initiatives have taken off, but "illegal" downloading is still a massive issue. I had the entire CD before release, along with the bonus tracks. I bet most everyone on Interference did, too. Now, I bought the deluxe set the day it was released and several copies as gifts. However, if I was 16 and broke, I can see me being thrilled with my massive collection of downloaded music. In fact, I was a big U2 fan at 16, and remember getting blank tapes for making countless copies of bootlegs and albums to support my U2 habit back in 1983-1989. There is no telling how many people have bought the complete U2, which may not have counted in the charts at the time. So, between legal and illegal downloads, ALL MUSICIANS are being affected by a serious decline in overall industry LP sales.
Lot's of if's, and's, or but's in these scenarios, but I'm still not going to bet against the U2 machine because we see a sales dip in March between singles and the start of the tour.
P.S. Sorry for the long-winded response(s)...as I've said to a few others, I just had my 2nd back surgery in 3 months as the result of a bizarre auto accident, so I've got way too much time on my hands listening to U2 and surfing the Net.
Cheers to the chart watchers at Interference!
HTDAAB may be off the pace of some of U2's best sellers over the last several weeks, but it's still U2's fastest selling album, and it sold 840K in the U.S. and 1.84M Worldwide in it's first week! Only one album did better than that in 2004, and I think it was Norah Jones with a scant difference with her album selling around 1.91M.
In an article dated December 28, 2002, 13+ months after the release of ATYCLB, album sales were quoted at 3.1M in the U.S. and 10M worldwide. With the 2002 Grammy "avalanche", the 2002 Superbowl performance, and the 9/11 effect, ATYCLB went on to sell another 1M in the U.S. and about 1M ROW. Remember, it was released in November of 2000. As Bono said recently, the secret to having successful album sales is to make it last over two Christmas Seasons. They did it with AB, missed the deadline with POP, but did it again with ATYCLB and set the stage for HTDAAB to pull it off, too. It's a proven strategy.
In 3.5 months, HTDAAB is being credited with 8.5M sold (shipped) while we know that actual sales to consumers are just under 7M. That is incredible! The tour will help U2 maintain sales, as the reviews for this show should be highly favorable if the massive effects can match the music, which should be great. Also, this tour will push ROW sales even higher as the buzz in Europe has been great. U2 did a lot of rearranging for this first leg, and it might not help sales as much in the U.S., but if the 3rd leg indeed does come back to N.A. in the September - November time frame, then the album will again have a buzz for a 2nd Christmas Season, not to mention Grammy nominations, which boost sales, and then Grammy performances and wins, which boost sales. I think HTDAAB has an excellent chance at "Album of the Year", which won't be awarded until February of 2005!
The other supporting effort is from singles, and U2 gets an A+ for Vertigo, but an F for ABOY. Sometimes is a great song that is doing well despite more bungled opportunities from U2 or the record company...probably the latter. We still have no video in the U.S., and I can only fathom that is due to ABOY actually still climbing both the MTV and VH1 video charts, even though it's fallen off the radio. Perhaps they are waiting for the ABOY video to peak, which usually means a very quick disappearance from the charts, before releasing the Sometimes video. I think the split releases of singles around the world is a bad idea and I hope this is the end of it.
Now, if Sometimes flops, and album sales do not rise with the R&R induction & start of the tour in the U.S., then I would agree that HTDAAB may not reach 4M+ sales in the U.S. 18 months after it's release. However, based on the ROW popularity, I think HTDAAB is a lock to match or surpass ATYCLB's 12M in Global sales.
Another unfortunate phenomena is that album sales, as a whole, have declined SIGNIFICANTLY every year over the past 4 years, and 2005 is already running over 10% behind 2004 industry sales! That's a lot of albums, especially when we are talking about sales in the millions. The 16-25 demographic gets just about all their music off the internet...hell, I do and I'm 37. Itunes and other initiatives have taken off, but "illegal" downloading is still a massive issue. I had the entire CD before release, along with the bonus tracks. I bet most everyone on Interference did, too. Now, I bought the deluxe set the day it was released and several copies as gifts. However, if I was 16 and broke, I can see me being thrilled with my massive collection of downloaded music. In fact, I was a big U2 fan at 16, and remember getting blank tapes for making countless copies of bootlegs and albums to support my U2 habit back in 1983-1989. There is no telling how many people have bought the complete U2, which may not have counted in the charts at the time. So, between legal and illegal downloads, ALL MUSICIANS are being affected by a serious decline in overall industry LP sales.
Lot's of if's, and's, or but's in these scenarios, but I'm still not going to bet against the U2 machine because we see a sales dip in March between singles and the start of the tour.
P.S. Sorry for the long-winded response(s)...as I've said to a few others, I just had my 2nd back surgery in 3 months as the result of a bizarre auto accident, so I've got way too much time on my hands listening to U2 and surfing the Net.
Cheers to the chart watchers at Interference!
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granted it has been a poor week, but to compare it to ATYCLB sales this same week cannot really be made i feel, the char in U.S. looks an awful lot weaker compared to the chart of AYCLB era, maybe the large drop in sales this week is in relation to the massive rise it had last week, i belive it was the 5th? largest % climb after the grammys,
ladywithspinninghead
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Axver said:
No mention of U2 in Billboard's "Sneak Peek" review of this weeks charts. The Top 20 on Hits is very close to this week's Top 20 on Billboard, with a few glaring exceptions. Hits has Tori Amos debut at #7 with sales of 67K for her new album The Beekeper. Billboard/Soundscan, however, show her coming it at #5 with 83,000 albums sold.
I doubt U2 will benefit from such a discrepency, but considering that the difference between 45 and 25 on Hits is a scant 8,000 units sold, their is room for improvement. That's why I still feel HTDAAB has plenty of life left it in...the sales are SO LOW across the board that it wouldn't take much (say a tour, hit single, R&R induction, etc.) to make a major climb up the charts.
The bad news, and this was the MAJOR FOCUS OF BB'S ARTICLE, is that sales are off 13% according to Soundscan this year compared to last year, which continues a 4 year trend. So what if U2 was in the Top 20 this week but only selling 9K more units? The only real winners appear to be in the Top 5, and even they are off bigtime compared to last year.
Complete BB and Airplay update coming tomorrow.
I doubt U2 will benefit from such a discrepency, but considering that the difference between 45 and 25 on Hits is a scant 8,000 units sold, their is room for improvement. That's why I still feel HTDAAB has plenty of life left it in...the sales are SO LOW across the board that it wouldn't take much (say a tour, hit single, R&R induction, etc.) to make a major climb up the charts.
The bad news, and this was the MAJOR FOCUS OF BB'S ARTICLE, is that sales are off 13% according to Soundscan this year compared to last year, which continues a 4 year trend. So what if U2 was in the Top 20 this week but only selling 9K more units? The only real winners appear to be in the Top 5, and even they are off bigtime compared to last year.
Complete BB and Airplay update coming tomorrow.
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