lol I get the david wtf image in my head now and that slapping one eddie uses haha

Just though that we need that image here to laught a little today

Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ve been curious to what happened to DAà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s album sales over this last week on itunes. I donà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t see him in the top 100 on all music (albums) anymore. Crush seems to be going lower on the chart at itunes also. Thatà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s why I was hoping to see ALTNOY come out I guess. Are they buying the albums in physical stores more now? Ok, Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ll admit, I think Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢m angsting a little bit this week (or handwringing, as MJ would say), lol. Forgive me. I probably need to back away some and allow those more in the know to mull over this stuff! lol

His album was way down in the bottom of the Top 100 this past week when it sold 66K. He’s obviously selling more physical copies of his CD than anything else (as do all artists, but relatively more of his sales are from physical copies than other artists). Yet his sales overall are very good for a pop artist.

iTunes for albums is different than iTunes for singles. With singles, iTunes makes up a tremendous amount of the market. Pretty much whatever you sell on iTunes is how much you sell of your single each week because the competitors are barely there (Amazon, Napster, etc.). With albums, it seems like (and no, I don’t have access to Apple’s numbers, but it seems like), unless an album is in its first week of release, it’s just not going to sell much on iTunes at all (there are exceptions, like Taylor Swift).

For example, look at Lady Gaga’s album–it’s in the 20s on iTunes yet it didn’t make the top 50 in album sales this past week. It gets relatively more of its sales from iTunes than David does, but that’s apparently not that much anyway. iTunes supposedly makes up 17% of the album sales market (behind Walmart and Best Buy, I believe), but that doesn’t mean that it makes up 17% of each album’s sales. Because it’s digital, it has a much wider variety of albums for people to choose from–they don’t have to keep items “in stock” or in boxes out back and continue to reorder. They never sell out. So they’re continually selling their massive inventory. It seems that they only make up 17% of the market because they sell a little each of a lot of albums, not that the top 100 albums are necessarily selling much individually. I would be surprised if any album below the top 10 or even top 5 was selling more than 10K each week–in fact, I think it’s probably a lower threshold than that. A lot of $5 albums make the top 10 on iTunes each week as well, and none of them make the top 50 in overall sales. It’s just not enough.

And, not like it matters much, but David is splitting sales between two versions of his album. It’s not going to add up to tons either way, but if he weren’t, he would probably still be in the top 100 somewhere.

So, yeah, iTunes for albums? Don’t sweat it.

As for Crush–songs have to move down eventually. It’s being pushed down by a lot of Britney album songs and Christmas songs, but fact is that it’s not getting as much airplay anymore. Can’t go on forever. Even “So What” has moved down a lot and that was a massive seller.

Kirsten, maybe they put it out in front in the store because of the almost all red colorà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ ¦.matches their Christmas decor maybe, LOL

LOL. Maybe. Score one for the art department.

Ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s not like Jive wonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t be promoting the record in the meantime.

I’ve noticed that I’m seeing lots more google ads on this site for the CD and that it was given a better sales spot in my local record store (couldn’t help but notice it right at the entrance of the store as I walked by on my way to visit Santa today). Could be that Jive thinks those things are more useful at this time of year than concentrating on the second single. Who knows? Maybe they know what they are doing. Maybe not. Maybe the need another slap up-side the head.

Who knows, maybe some more experienced exec saw when they scheduled both Britney and David, slapped some less experienced guy on the head and said, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“WTF?à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬  and so they changed them.

That is an amazing visual. I kind of hope that’s what happened.

I can kind of see “Circus” having an early release date. I seem to recall that in the past Brit’s singles go up and down the charts very fast. “Womanizer” is being very robust for her. Maybe they just thought it would follow a similar trajectory to her last two singles. When it didn’t, they had to move out the add date for her second single (which may be more evidence as to why they pushed out Archie’s second single).

What behooves a station to play ALTNOY as opposed to one of the other songs simply because Jive says ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s the next single?

Radio stations are lemmings. They all like to have the same hip songs at the same time. If they aren’t playing the hip song that somebody else is playing, they look less hip themselves. So, the labels help out by saying “this is the hip song and you should play it now” (sometimes the radio stations say “I don’t think so”). The label likes all the radio stations to play the single all at the same time because the song can go higher up the chart. If some stations play it for the first three months and then others for the next three months, the song doesn’t climb too far in the charts. If they all play it at once, the song looks more successful (goes higher up the charts) and more lemmings are convinced to play it. Labels encourage radio stations by talking to them and giving them lots of good reasons to play their song (they are kind of like uber-fans with better phone numbers to call) such as music surveys.

Some labels like stations to start playing on the add date. Jive seems to like stations to start playing before the add date (as do a lot of other labels). Then, it looks like the radio stations are SO excited to play it, they can’t wait for the add date. “Look, it’s in the Top 40 already and it is hasn’t even been added yet”. Jive has been very busy this fall.

I don’t think that the problem is the PDs not wanting to play this song. If it was, Jive would have switched the single with the release date. They didn’t. So, it’s probably something else (“Crush” still has legs, new strategy, waiting for video, some kind of tie-in or something).