so i heard that the second week sales at the halfway point for Kanye are 50K and 50 Cent is at 30K...
If thats true then that means his second week's sales will be around 100K if he manages to hold up through the rest of the week... This also means that Kanye's sale fell about 90%?
Curtis is looking a little better because if he pushes through the end of the week then he will be at 60K which means he only dropped 80%.
My vote is on first week sales being rigged as hell.
so i heard that the second week sales at the halfway point for Kanye are 50K and 50 Cent is at 30K...
If thats true then that means his second week's sales will be around 100K if he manages to hold up through the rest of the week... This also means that Kanye's sale fell about 90%?
Curtis is looking a little better because if he pushes through the end of the week then he will be at 60K which means he only dropped 80%.
My vote is on first week sales being rigged as hell.
I really don't think the sales are that extraordinary at all, even in a slumping market.
I find these numbers very shocking - I mean, its been a while since a popular rap album went plat at ALL, never mind in less than 2 weeks...
That doesn't make it shocking. Unusual compared to general trends, sure but look at what else is out there: Fergie's album hit #2 the other week and it's been out for a year. Nickelback just went past 5 million albums and their CD is two years old. There's always going to be exceptions to the rule and Kanye and 50 are two of the biggest rappers out there with national appeal. Them selling well isn't surprising considering the sales records on their LAST respective albums.
I just find this idea that the "numbers must be inflated" to be spurious. I'm sure there's always some inflation but if Def Jam had the resources to make Kanye's album look significantly bigger than his reported numbers really are, why didn't they do that for, say, Jay-Z's album? An album that had huge hype behind it and was being touted by the PRESIDENT OF THE LABEL. It just doesn't make sense to suggest conspiracy theories for Kanye and 50's numbers. Even if they were inflated by, say, 20% (which I would find rather unlikely), it still would have been a huge week for everyone involved.
I like Just Blaze's take on it:
"If you look at the numbers, compared to the majority of sales this year, one point is strongly proven. PEOPLE WILL STILL BUY GOOD MUSIC. There are songs I like and dislike on both albums, but theyre were both solid albums, and better than most that came out this year. It doesnt matter who sold exactly what, but between Ye, 50 and the Country Guy, almost 2 million records were purchased last week. More than some label???s entire hip-hop rosters sold in the past 12 months. Now granted of course there was a huge hype machine behind 2 out of the 3, but at the end of the day, people don???t always feed into the hype machines, as we all know, and they aren???t as stupid as we generally assume the masses to be."
I actually wasn't even thinking about the numbers being inflated, I was just surprised that many CDs could be sold in 2007... but if what 33third says is true, they are almost certainly distorted. Hell, I know for a fact that labels were artifically pushing up numbers several years ago (when my girl worked at a record store) back when CDs were still selling huge numbers, and this was for a release that was already very popular...
so i heard that the second week sales at the halfway point for Kanye are 50K and 50 Cent is at 30K...
If thats true then that means his second week's sales will be around 100K if he manages to hold up through the rest of the week... This also means that Kanye's sale fell about 90%?
Curtis is looking a little better because if he pushes through the end of the week then he will be at 60K which means he only dropped 80%.
My vote is on first week sales being rigged as hell.
I don't know - there's really no such thing as strong second week sales anymore. "good" is falling off about 65%, unfortunately. Unless you're on Oprah on the 6th day of your first week, you're pretty much screwed.
so i heard that the second week sales at the halfway point for Kanye are 50K and 50 Cent is at 30K...
If thats true then that means his second week's sales will be around 100K if he manages to hold up through the rest of the week... This also means that Kanye's sale fell about 90%?
Curtis is looking a little better because if he pushes through the end of the week then he will be at 60K which means he only dropped 80%.
My vote is on first week sales being rigged as hell.
I don't know - there's really no such thing as strong second week sales anymore. "good" is falling off about 65%, unfortunately. Unless you're on Oprah on the 6th day of your first week, you're pretty much screwed.
both records have enough good songs that if the labels support them they should be selling good for a while.
but i mean, with the internet and everything, if you havent heard a whole album by the end of the first week, and its a big release, you are probably not interested.
"Kanye West's Def Jam album "Graduation" falls to No. 2 with 226,000, a sales slide of 76%. 50 Cent's "Curtis" does nearly the same, slipping 2-3 with 143,000 (-79%)."
The drop is a bit more precipitous than other albums - T.I.'s CD took a 63% drop in its second week - but it's still a very standard pattern for most albums ("High School High 2" is an exception but it's also a very different kind of album and consumer base).
I don't see any real evidence of there being a huge rigging. These two albums are selling very well even if we should take the tallies with a grain of salt.
"Kanye West's Def Jam album "Graduation" falls to No. 2 with 226,000, a sales slide of 76%. 50 Cent's "Curtis" does nearly the same, slipping 2-3 with 143,000 (-79%)."
The drop is a bit more precipitous than other albums - T.I.'s CD took a 63% drop in its second week - but it's still a very standard pattern for most albums ("High School High 2" is an exception but it's also a very different kind of album and consumer base).
I don't see any real evidence of there being a huge rigging. These two albums are selling very well even if we should take the tallies with a grain of salt.
my point is that if they are claiming the sales are that high the first week when in fact they aren't then it becomes an issue of either they won't face the truth regarding CD sales, or they know that sales are in the toilet and they are trying to pull a fast one on consumers.
Honestly at this poitn with all the marketing they did for these two albumsthe sales shouldn't matter anymore. I am just really surprised that they were putting so much weight on the sales.
Also I think this does a disservice for the rest of the rap music industry because now it really makes you look bad if you can't sell the over-inflated numbers that 50 and Kanye did. I mean if you are on a major and you sold 100K before Kanye and 50 then that was looked at (finally) as beiong passable ince it was acceptes that sales were slumping overall. Now if you ell 100K on a major, I am sure there is going to be knee-jerk reactions like dropping people from labels, tying up later releases, cancelling singles etc.
"Kanye West's Def Jam album "Graduation" falls to No. 2 with 226,000, a sales slide of 76%. 50 Cent's "Curtis" does nearly the same, slipping 2-3 with 143,000 (-79%)."
The drop is a bit more precipitous than other albums - T.I.'s CD took a 63% drop in its second week - but it's still a very standard pattern for most albums ("High School High 2" is an exception but it's also a very different kind of album and consumer base).
I don't see any real evidence of there being a huge rigging. These two albums are selling very well even if we should take the tallies with a grain of salt.
my point is that if they are claiming the sales are that high the first week when in fact they aren't then it becomes an issue of either they won't face the truth regarding CD sales, or they know that sales are in the toilet and they are trying to pull a fast one on consumers.
Honestly at this poitn with all the marketing they did for these two albumsthe sales shouldn't matter anymore. I am just really surprised that they were putting so much weight on the sales.
Also I think this does a disservice for the rest of the rap music industry because now it really makes you look bad if you can't sell the over-inflated numbers that 50 and Kanye did. I mean if you are on a major and you sold 100K before Kanye and 50 then that was looked at (finally) as beiong passable ince it was acceptes that sales were slumping overall. Now if you ell 100K on a major, I am sure there is going to be knee-jerk reactions like dropping people from labels, tying up later releases, cancelling singles etc.
Anyway the numbers should be out today.
Uh, I just quoted the sales. This is what Billboard is reporting. Kanye did 226,000 in the second week. 50 took 143,000.
You've been keen on insisting that there's been gross inflation but there's no actual evidence on your part to prove this, just conjecture that, "Kanye couldn't possibly have sold that many CDs."
"I think this does a disservice for the rest of the rap music industry" = so, um, it's a bad thing when a rap album sells well because it puts pressure on other rappers to sell well?
Not that I think record execs are mathematical geniuses, but I'm assuming at least some of them are capable of looking at, you know, actual data and realize that most albums aren't selling well and they might adjust their expectations accordingly. It's rather simple economics. Billboard noted that despite Kanye and 50's sales, the overall album sales for 2007 is down 9% from the same point in 2006. If I were an exec, that's the far more important number to be aware of.
That said, what this will do is empower Kanye even more. And one could argue that's a disservice to society in general.
Comments
If thats true then that means his second week's sales will be around 100K if he manages to hold up through the rest of the week... This also means that Kanye's sale fell about 90%?
Curtis is looking a little better because if he pushes through the end of the week then he will be at 60K which means he only dropped 80%.
My vote is on first week sales being rigged as hell.
I actually wasn't even thinking about the numbers being inflated, I was just surprised that many CDs could be sold in 2007... but if what 33third says is true, they are almost certainly distorted. Hell, I know for a fact that labels were artifically pushing up numbers several years ago (when my girl worked at a record store) back when CDs were still selling huge numbers, and this was for a release that was already very popular...
I don't know - there's really no such thing as strong second week sales anymore. "good" is falling off about 65%, unfortunately. Unless you're on Oprah on the 6th day of your first week, you're pretty much screwed.
both records have enough good songs that if the labels support them they should be selling good for a while.
but i mean, with the internet and everything, if you havent heard a whole album by the end of the first week, and its a big release, you are probably not interested.
The drop is a bit more precipitous than other albums - T.I.'s CD took a 63% drop in its second week - but it's still a very standard pattern for most albums ("High School High 2" is an exception but it's also a very different kind of album and consumer base).
I don't see any real evidence of there being a huge rigging. These two albums are selling very well even if we should take the tallies with a grain of salt.
my point is that if they are claiming the sales are that high the first week when in fact they aren't then it becomes an issue of either they won't face the truth regarding CD sales, or they know that sales are in the toilet and they are trying to pull a fast one on consumers.
Honestly at this poitn with all the marketing they did for these two albumsthe sales shouldn't matter anymore. I am just really surprised that they were putting so much weight on the sales.
Also I think this does a disservice for the rest of the rap music industry because now it really makes you look bad if you can't sell the over-inflated numbers that 50 and Kanye did. I mean if you are on a major and you sold 100K before Kanye and 50 then that was looked at (finally) as beiong passable ince it was acceptes that sales were slumping overall. Now if you ell 100K on a major, I am sure there is going to be knee-jerk reactions like dropping people from labels, tying up later releases, cancelling singles etc.
Anyway the numbers should be out today.
Uh, I just quoted the sales. This is what Billboard is reporting. Kanye did 226,000 in the second week. 50 took 143,000.
You've been keen on insisting that there's been gross inflation but there's no actual evidence on your part to prove this, just conjecture that, "Kanye couldn't possibly have sold that many CDs."
"I think this does a disservice for the rest of the rap music industry" = so, um, it's a bad thing when a rap album sells well because it puts pressure on other rappers to sell well?
Not that I think record execs are mathematical geniuses, but I'm assuming at least some of them are capable of looking at, you know, actual data and realize that most albums aren't selling well and they might adjust their expectations accordingly. It's rather simple economics. Billboard noted that despite Kanye and 50's sales, the overall album sales for 2007 is down 9% from the same point in 2006. If I were an exec, that's the far more important number to be aware of.
That said, what this will do is empower Kanye even more. And one could argue that's a disservice to society in general.
fuck all y'all.
Is that what you call your personal bear?