Should we be worried about decreasing record sales?

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moonzltdrm

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Should we be worried about U2 not being able to stay at the top of the charts as long as past albums and not selling a huge volume of albums in the first few weeks?
 
ooops...My bad on the title. I have been reading some critics on how the NLOTH has sold only half of what the last album did. Should we be concerned about that? Or is this a trend of more internet copies being sold?
 
In terms of US sales, well, it's not the typical buying season.. We are in the midst of a recession... Who knows if more internet copies were sold. But they peaked at number 1 and that's good. But once you reach 1 the only other way is down.

We'll see if album sales pick up again after the next single is released and the tour starts.
 
I think they should have released Magnificent as a 1st single. That song really screams U2 and I think it would have been a huge 1st single and a better launching point for stronger album sales.

I think Boots really fell on deaf ears.
 
moonzltdrm said:
Should we be worried about U2 not being able to stay at the top of the charts as long as past albums and not selling a huge volume of albums in the first few weeks?
Click to expand...

moonzltdrm said:
ooops...My bad on the title. I have been reading some critics on how the NLOTH has sold only half of what the last album did.
Click to expand...

Don't believe what you hear
Don't believe what you see

Everything You Know Is Wrong

This is especially true when reading on what some 'critics' or 'journalists' are writing. They often 'forget' to provide the context for judging the facts.
Yes, NLOTH opened with much fewer sales than HTDAAB (~480K vs. ~830K). The major reasons for this is that HTDAAB was released during the holiday season (Thanksgiving week in the US) when sales are always much higher. Whereas March is always a slow month, though generally the first month with major releases. Another important reason is that music sales in general are much lower than they were 4 years ago. Blame it on downloading, the economic recession, the fact that there's much more choice for entertainment (movies/DVD/games) or whatever, the market is much smaller than it was in the previous years.

So yeah, NLOTH sold less than U2's previous album. But it's no reason for worry. Not now. As of now, NLOTH is the highest-selling album of 2009. And it's still at/near the top of the charts in 30+ countries. Of course, not much can be said after just two/three weeks, but its chart performance looks to be just as good (or maybe even better) than their previous albums.

There's no reason to worry. :)
 
Yes you should be worried. We should all be worried. It is our duty to support this band in their time of crisis, i.e. poor album sales. I think the bigger question is what are you, we doing to help out this band that has given us all such a great life?

Well i can proudly say i am doing my part. This past week i have went to Best Buy, Wal Mart, Target, etc. and purchased around 5000 copies of NLOTH. In fact i have purchased every copy of NLOTH in this city! You might think to yourself, what is Mrs. Garrison doing with 5000 copies of NLOTH? Yeah good question...im handing them out to strangers on the street along with little pocket bibles (New Testament) and loaves of bread.

You might ask yourself how i can afford all of this? Well, first off, i am a very wealthy man/woman. I am very blessed. Second, even if i start to run low on funds i have faith in the Father that silver and gold will rain down from the sky like loose electricity. Plus i could always sell one of my McMansions in the hills (that used to be mountains), lay off the heroin for a month, and hook the corner like the good old days. Okay it was just last month that i was working the corner, but i did it for fun and not for money, so that really doesn't count. And ive replaced some of the heroin with hard liquor, i just love the way it looks in that brown paper bag.

Nothing heals the soul like the word of God, bread of the lamb, and NLOTH. Next week im heading to Kansas City to pass out a new Jesus DVD, raw fish, and 10,000 copies of NLOTH. Then 15,000 in St. Louis....in fact I'll be hitting a city near you really soon. It's my pilgrimage to keep NLOTH atop the charts and spread the word of our Lord and Savior & Bono.

J33-3
 
Yep, so worried that I couldn't sleep on Tuesday night and had to call in sick. Unfortunately this was the 3rd time this has happened since the albums release that I have subsequently received a written warning.

I have a Doctor's appointment this Monday and hopefully she'll be able to sign me off work to help me to cope.
 
I also think the reason Bomb sold as much as it did was as others said, the season it was released and also it was the follow up to All That You Can't.... So there was a lot of anticipation for that album. I also feel what helped the sales was the iTunes commercial featuring Vertigo.

I don't think the recent sales for NLOTH are a huge failure. It sold a lot in a season that isn't typically a big release season. It debuted at #1 and the critical success of the album has been amazing.
 
I'm not worried... the band seem to honestly be making and playing music because they enjoy it at this point, obviously wanting to make money, but primarily wanting to make great music and realizing that history will vindicate them for this approach... considering how much I personally love NLOTH (second only to AB for me, and going up; I can see it overtaking AB, possibly), I have very little personal reason to be worried.
 
Mrs. Garrison said:
Yes you should be worried. We should all be worried. It is our duty to support this band in their time of crisis, i.e. poor album sales. I think the bigger question is what are you, we doing to help out this band that has given us all such a great life?

Well i can proudly say i am doing my part. This past week i have went to Best Buy, Wal Mart, Target, etc. and purchased around 5000 copies of NLOTH. In fact i have purchased every copy of NLOTH in this city! You might think to yourself, what is Mrs. Garrison doing with 5000 copies of NLOTH? Yeah good question...im handing them out to strangers on the street along with little pocket bibles (New Testament) and loaves of bread.

You might ask yourself how i can afford all of this? Well, first off, i am a very wealthy man/woman. I am very blessed. Second, even if i start to run low on funds i have faith in the Father that silver and gold will rain down from the sky like loose electricity. Plus i could always sell one of my McMansions in the hills (that used to be mountains), lay off the heroin for a month, and hook the corner like the good old days. Okay it was just last month that i was working the corner, but i did it for fun and not for money, so that really doesn't count. And ive replaced some of the heroin with hard liquor, i just love the way it looks in that brown paper bag.

Nothing heals the soul like the word of God, bread of the lamb, and NLOTH. Next week im heading to Kansas City to pass out a new Jesus DVD, raw fish, and 10,000 copies of NLOTH. Then 15,000 in St. Louis....in fact I'll be hitting a city near you really soon. It's my pilgrimage to keep NLOTH atop the charts and spread the word of our Lord and Savior & Bono.

J33-3
Click to expand...

That made my day.
 
moonzltdrm said:
Should we be worried about U2 not being able to stay at the top of the charts as long as past albums and not selling a huge volume of albums in the first few weeks?
Click to expand...


Please tell me another band who after 30+ years has sold as many records as U2 has in the U.S. in their first week...and don't tell me ac/dc ...that was a freak occurence that still smells of Walmart fudged #s

Let's look at the facts as someone posted earlier(this applies in the U.S.)

1.) We are in a recession

2.) U2 released this album in March,not October or November like with the last two albums...so you can almost be sure they would have has higher#s for the first two weeks of a fall release of this album than they have so far in the first 2 weeks of March

3.) Illegal downloading is more prevelant than ever...even more so now than back in late 2004 when U2 released their last album

4.) Except for scattered stations on the West Coast and the East Coast and the occasional staion in the middle of the country U2 does NOT get played on rock radio stations in the United States....Program Directors seem to loathe Bono and the band in general or maybe it's simply the age issue...in order for this album to continue to sell the band is going to have a hit with IGCIDGCT on Top 40 radio stations


5.) Of the Rock staions that do play U2 there are less and less of them around and many former rock staions are becoming top 40-CHR or urban hip hop staions that play shir music by shit artists like Lady Ga Ga(who the fuck is she anyway??) U2 really made a mistake by not promoting their new album on Satellite radio which would have given them a push with a national forum and a temporary channel for a month like what Coldplay,Metallica and AC/DC were given...it certainly didn't hurt their sales


At the end of the day I'm not worried about U2 staying at the top ofthe charts as long as with past albums...they're older they're rich and have an established fan base....I fell sorryfor the new bands who have to deal with a new business model and have to relentlessly tour just to make a few bucks
 
Mrs. Garrison said:
Yes you should be worried. We should all be worried. It is our duty to support this band in their time of crisis, i.e. poor album sales. I think the bigger question is what are you, we doing to help out this band that has given us all such a great life?

Well i can proudly say i am doing my part. This past week i have went to Best Buy, Wal Mart, Target, etc. and purchased around 5000 copies of NLOTH. In fact i have purchased every copy of NLOTH in this city! You might think to yourself, what is Mrs. Garrison doing with 5000 copies of NLOTH? Yeah good question...im handing them out to strangers on the street along with little pocket bibles (New Testament) and loaves of bread.

You might ask yourself how i can afford all of this? Well, first off, i am a very wealthy man/woman. I am very blessed. Second, even if i start to run low on funds i have faith in the Father that silver and gold will rain down from the sky like loose electricity. Plus i could always sell one of my McMansions in the hills (that used to be mountains), lay off the heroin for a month, and hook the corner like the good old days. Okay it was just last month that i was working the corner, but i did it for fun and not for money, so that really doesn't count. And ive replaced some of the heroin with hard liquor, i just love the way it looks in that brown paper bag.

Nothing heals the soul like the word of God, bread of the lamb, and NLOTH. Next week im heading to Kansas City to pass out a new Jesus DVD, raw fish, and 10,000 copies of NLOTH. Then 15,000 in St. Louis....in fact I'll be hitting a city near you really soon. It's my pilgrimage to keep NLOTH atop the charts and spread the word of our Lord and Savior & Bono.

J33-3
Click to expand...


Well if that's true you should send the reciept to Principle Management pronto

Paul McGuinness and the band owe you a personal concert at your house :D:up:
 
Thoughts on this topic:

1. Taylor Swift had the top album for close to 10 straight weeks before U2, but she was only selling 50k per week to hold down #1. U2 sells almost 10 times this and the album is criticized for underperforming.

2. As many mentioned, Bomb was released during the holiday season, NLOTH was released in March.

3. Though not as big as Bomb, I believe the sales figures for NLOTH are similar to ALTYCLB and Achtung first week figures and both albums were huge successes.

4. I DO think the switch from Apple affected sales - if a cool iPod commercial with Magnificent ran for 3 weeks prior to the album's release, it would have made a huge difference, similar to Vertigo and Viva la Vida. The promotional tour was awesome for the U2 fans, but the general audience would have heard U2 more from the iPod commercial than they did from the radio. Case in point was the Viva la Vida commercial, which ran incessantly up to the release of the Coldplay album, where Violet Hill was actually the first track sent to radio. Our local stations did not start playing Viva until the market had been saturated from the commercial.

5. Magnificent would certainly have helped sales, but I can see why they did not follow this track. Releasing Boots first makes sense - Magnificent sounds like classic U2, but the critics may have said that U2 was going back to the old well again. Releasing Boots reminded me of the Fly release, which was never a huge hit on Top 40 (at least in the US). Mysterious Ways was the first big hit off Achtung and it was hitting the radio when tickets went on sale for the Zoo TV tour. I think they should have released Magnificent a week before the album went on sale. Boots was already dying on the charts and there is no problem having two new songs on the radio anyway (see Beyonce). I think the combined one-two punch would have helped.

6. Downloads certainly hurt sales (who didn't hear the album before it was released?).

7. I think the strong critical reaction helped sales, but U2 didn't take advantage of this by including the critical faves in advertising hype. I am also peeved by the articles (EW, etc.) that are taking an overly pessimistic view of the sales figures, while failing to note the critical attention and potential for the album to do well in the long term.

8. The relationship with Blackberry better somehow help with the tour, because it did not do anything for the album release. Once again, I think not having a strong copromotion with Apple has hurt sales.

9. I think the album should do fine - it is excellent. However, the negative reaction by the media to Boots and the sales figures for the first album remind me the reaction to Discotheque and the Pop sales. This was also the last time U2 toured stadiums in the US, so hopefully this does not portend problems with the 360 tour.
 
david said:
In terms of US sales, well, it's not the typical buying season.. We are in the midst of a recession... Who knows if more internet copies were sold. But they peaked at number 1 and that's good. But once you reach 1 the only other way is down.

We'll see if album sales pick up again after the next single is released and the tour starts.
Click to expand...

Some info. regarding internet sales (from Yahoo's Chart Watch):
Nearly 155,000 copies of the new album were sold digitally. This is the second-biggest weekly tally ever for paid downloads of an album. It trails only Coldplay's Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, which sold 288,000 downloads in its first week in June. To give you an idea how this market has exploded, U2's last studio album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, sold 30,000 downloads in its first week in November 2004. And that slim total set a new record at the time
Click to expand...

NLOTH saw a huge increase over HTDAAB in terms of internet downloads in its first week, but that still wasn't enough to off-set the impact of the holidays, recession and illegal downloading. Plus, with no huge first single, NLOTH will have a softer start. Still, its first week was solid.
 
buzzkill27 said:
Please tell me another band who after 30+ years has sold as many records as U2 has in the U.S. in their first week...and don't tell me ac/dc ...that was a freak occurence that still smells of Walmart fudged #s
Click to expand...

Quit with the conspiracy theories. AC/DC really did sell in that number. Have you checked out the catalog sales for Back In Black? The album has been in the Top 20 like every single week for decades now. So, it sells millions every few years in the United States. There was also pent up demand because there hadn't been an AC/DC album in a while and one in at least 15 years that had been as heavily promoted. Then, it's on sale at Wal-Mart where most of the 40-50 year old listeners shop in the middle of nowhereland...trust me, AC/DC did sell that amount of units. There have always been bigger bands than U2 in the United States in terms of record sales, usually because there's a lot of people here that won't accept rock that isn't extremely loud or headache inducing.
 
BigMacPhisto said:
Quit with the conspiracy theories. AC/DC really did sell in that number. Have you checked out the catalog sales for Back In Black? The album has been in the Top 20 like every single week for decades now. So, it sells millions every few years in the United States. There was also pent up demand because there hadn't been an AC/DC album in a while and one in at least 15 years that had been as heavily promoted. Then, it's on sale at Wal-Mart where most of the 40-50 year old listeners shop in the middle of nowhereland...trust me, AC/DC did sell that amount of units. There have always been bigger bands than U2 in the United States in terms of record sales, usually because there's a lot of people here that won't accept rock that isn't extremely loud or headache inducing.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'll buy your points to an extent....and the sales of AC/DC 's back catalog are impressive,but that's their BACK catalog...as in WAY BACK.

Did you see what the first week sales for stiff upper lip in the U.S. were? 130,000....yes 130,000 to 740,000 is just to big of a leap for me not to think some shady shit was going on.

And 8 years is a long period of time between record releases..sorry still not buying...I will say however that having their own temporary channel on satellite radio for 2 months seemed to help them immensely and u2 should have done the same thing...I have to find out why that was not the case
 
I wouldn't be concerned except for the fact that I think NLOTH is far superior to HTDAAB and I'm a little afraid the band will interpret the sales figures as a sign that they need to release HTDAAB II, III, IV, etc. from here on out. However, I think the band is savvy enough to realize there's a recession going on and that's bound to affect sales numbers.
 
I disagree, i think HTDAAB is far far better than NLOTH. the worst songs on bomb are at worst equal to the best songs on NLOTH. not to say that i dont like NLOTH but HTDAAB is my fave album ever.

The Daily Express, March 21, 2009


WITH U2 having released their 12th album, drummer Larry Mullen Jr believes their days are numbered.

A founder member with Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton, he says it’s important the band goes out while still on top of their game.

“There will be a time when it’s like, ‘It’s time to go,’” says Larry, 47, known as Babyface Mullen.

“I would like that to be on a high when you’re still achieving as opposed to the curve down. That’ll be sad for me. I think it’ll be a more dignified time to go.

“We might come back in five years’ time and may do something together for old times’ sake because we know we’ll want to. That’ll be a beautiful end to a long, beautiful career. It can’t go on for ever. It just can’t.”

(c) The Daily Express, 2009

the above article is quite alarming, it makes it sound that theyre about to call it a day, but there on tour for another 2 years + supposedly have another album already made for release next year.
'we might come back in 5 years time' isnt that how long it takes them to make a new record normally anyway!
 
Native_Son said:
I disagree, i think HTDAAB is far far better than NLOTH. the worst songs on bomb are at worst equal to the best songs on NLOTH. not to say that i dont like NLOTH but HTDAAB is my fave album ever.
Click to expand...

I enjoy HTDAAB quite a bit - it's far better than ATYCLB, "Pop" and "Zooropa", IMO.

However, it is light years behind NLOTH. The worst songs on HTDAAB are truly amongst some of U2's worst songs ever. I can't stand "A Man and a Woman" or "One Step Closer". The latter should have been a b-side to "Sometimes...". Fortunately, the album has some real winners (and I include "Fast Cars" as an album track when I say this) that outshine those stinking piles of "music".

In contrast, while I don't love every song on NLOTH, its worst is eons better than HTDAAB's worst. And the fact that U2 didn't try for such a "pop" album makes NLOTH much more enjoyable.

But perhaps that's the issue - NLOTH isn't as accessible. Given that the last two albums were incredibly accessible, I do find this a refreshing and welcome change.
 
Someone needs to post the quote from Adam regarding how long the band will go on etc, this quote is getting well out of hand now.

People keep forgetting about the new 12 year deal with live nation, and the fact Bono has gone out of his way during the promo tour to tell new fans that "they are not going anywhere anytime soon".
 
As a few people have already suggested, I believe the numbers are just a reflection of a lot of things combined together. the bad economy, illegal downloads, etc.

However, I think U2 will more than make up for lagging album sales, when the Tour starts.

By the time they are done touring I think they'll have made enough to purchase a small country if they want.
 
Mrs. Garrison said:
Yes you should be worried. We should all be worried. It is our duty to support this band in their time of crisis, i.e. poor album sales. I think the bigger question is what are you, we doing to help out this band that has given us all such a great life?

Well i can proudly say i am doing my part. This past week i have went to Best Buy, Wal Mart, Target, etc. and purchased around 5000 copies of NLOTH. In fact i have purchased every copy of NLOTH in this city! You might think to yourself, what is Mrs. Garrison doing with 5000 copies of NLOTH? Yeah good question...im handing them out to strangers on the street along with little pocket bibles (New Testament) and loaves of bread.

You might ask yourself how i can afford all of this? Well, first off, i am a very wealthy man/woman. I am very blessed. Second, even if i start to run low on funds i have faith in the Father that silver and gold will rain down from the sky like loose electricity. Plus i could always sell one of my McMansions in the hills (that used to be mountains), lay off the heroin for a month, and hook the corner like the good old days. Okay it was just last month that i was working the corner, but i did it for fun and not for money, so that really doesn't count. And ive replaced some of the heroin with hard liquor, i just love the way it looks in that brown paper bag.

Nothing heals the soul like the word of God, bread of the lamb, and NLOTH. Next week im heading to Kansas City to pass out a new Jesus DVD, raw fish, and 10,000 copies of NLOTH. Then 15,000 in St. Louis....in fact I'll be hitting a city near you really soon. It's my pilgrimage to keep NLOTH atop the charts and spread the word of our Lord and Savior & Bono.

J33-3
Click to expand...

Hehe, gotta hand it to ya, that was pretty funny!
 
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