Music Industry In Trouble?
Rolling Stone : “High School Musical 2″ Soundtrack Sets Record For Worst Best-Seller Ever
The amount of albums HSM2 sold: 2.3 million copies. That figure means the album is poised to walk away with a more dubious honor: the record for lowest number of copies sold by the year’s best-selling album since SoundScan started keeping track of these stats in 1991. The previous Worst-Best mark was 2006’s High School Musical soundtrack, which sold 3.7 million copies, more than a million more than its sequel.
As the article further points out, Shania Twain’s record about a decade ago sold 15 million copies. Remember when The Backstreet Boys would release an album to 1,000,000 sales on its first day?
There’s no bigger phenom amongst the kiddies right now than HSM. If that thing can’t sell better than 4 million copies, there’s trouble brewing.
It’s a CD selling for less than EIGHT BUCKS and they still can’t sell it. Amazing.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
I was wondering if they counted digital sales as part of that total, and if you follow the Rolling Stone link to the NY Post link, it says it does. If they weren’t included, I wouldn’t have been so quick to say it is a troubling sign, but now that I know that they are… I’m still not so sure. They don’t count single digital sales as part of that total, not surprisingly, since it’s album-based.
I’m not sure this points to the music industry being in trouble more than it points to the concept of *albums* being in trouble, which I’m 100% sure they are.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Digital sales still aren’t that huge. Unless the digital sales were a million or more, I don’t think I’d pay them much attention. That’s still a HUGE gap between Shania Twain and HSM2.
Ah, the glory of 99 cent single songs — another thing the record industry hasn’t figured out how to deal with yet.