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In a low-sales era, what's a hit in music?


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Guest Danny86
I think a lot of this is karma for pushing Britney, N'Sync, BSB, etc... as "albums artists" instead of letting the consumers decide if they want the CD or the single in the 90's, especially considering those three had high filler ratios on their albums after the singles and weren't exactly Madonna/Garbage/Bjork/Tori in terms of crafting an entire album worth listening to and demanding of your purchase. The industry fucked itself with its greed and turned recordbuyers off and they're still suffering as a result of deserved consumer rebellion.

That's very accurate. Which means you can't make the people get to know your album through singles anymore. So Madonna is doing the right thing with performing 9 songs from the current album on tour. It's another thing that that only gives small percentage gains because most of the audience already has the album...

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Guest nothingfails0603
That's very accurate. Which means you can't make the people get to know your album through singles anymore. So Madonna is doing the right thing with performing 9 songs from the current album on tour. It's another thing that that only gives small percentage gains because most of the audience already has the album...

Wven tho I've been very critical of HC and it's probably my least favorite album in her collection, I honestly think if people were given the chance to hear Miles Away or Dance 2night (the much better Justin collaboration IMO, one that would've been less alienating) that it could get people who loathed 4 Minutes to consider checking the album out. You're right, Madonna does a good job of spotlighting her latest albums knowing that MTV and radio aren't the place to go now, though most people who bought tickets own a copy.

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With HC, Madonna was going for the safest and more commercial album stateside she's done since Bedtime Stories, going into a genre with a much wider audience than dance music and working with some of the hottest names around, yet despite airplay for 4 Minutes she hasn't seen since Don't Tell Me, the album is just doing slightly better than AL, an album everyone agrees was a commercial disaster stateside. I'm realistic that sales are down, but if COADF could sell 1.6 million with no US airplay and being a genre that has little appeal outside of gay men, HC should've had no problem passing the million mark.

But Radio isn't playing a Madonna song today and she released GI2M and MA after 4M, and both songs do not scream US smash.

To get people to buy an album you have to have more than one hit single and/or huge promotion, Madonna didn't have either.

During Holiday Season and with the attention COAD had HC would have sold 1.2 m by now.

And HC is doing more than just slightly better than AL. I mean it's five years later. When I think back how many CD's I bought in 2003 compared to 2008. HC is in the charts double as long as Al was, so that should say it all.

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Guest nothingfails0603
They appeal to straight males. It's as simple as that.

actually, Coldplay is very "uncool" to straight men. Look no further than the "you know how I know you're gay?" scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin. I remember telling a friend who works in rock radio I was listening to them, and his response? "ew". I think women and "rock-friendly" gay men (much like The Killers) are more Coldplay's audience than testosterone filled straight guys. To them Coldplay is "wuss music".

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On a sidenote I read the paper with this article today and they had a good sized pic of Hard Candy which they declared a "Hit".

In a low-sales era, what's a hit in music?

The economic downturn may represent a grave new world for most folks, but not those in the music industry.

Way before world markets began circling the drain, record companies saw their sales dive into free fall. Album purchases - at least the legal kind - have been quickly eroding for most of this decade. (Thank you, Napster and all your peer-to-peer file-sharing offspring).

Here's just the latest example. On this week's Billboard 200 album chart, Usher's "Here I Stand" falls below the No. 100 mark after selling just over 1 million copies. His previous album, "Confessions," sold nine times that figure just four years ago.

Let's face it: We're never going back to those halcyon days. Certainly, we're not going back to the go-go days of the '90s, when you had more than a dozen performers who could move more than 10 million copies of a given CD - an era crowned by Shania Twain's "Come on Over," which pushed a whopping 15.5 million copies. That figure made it the largest-selling CD of the entire Nielsen/SoundScan era, which began in 1991, when the industry began using verifiable sales tallies.

By contrast, this year's top-selling album has moved an anemic 2.5 million copies (Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III"). While more than two months remain in '08, it's hugely unlikely that Wayne will pick up the extra 1.1 million cash-register rings he'd need to beat the top seller of '07: Josh Groban's "Noel," which topped 3.6 million platters. Nor will he come near the peaks of '06 ("High School Musical 2" at 3.7 mil) or '05 (Mariah Carey's "The Adventures of Mimi" at 5 million).

In fact, there has been a steady downturn in total sales for the top five albums in each year of this decade, ranging from a high of 22.3 million in 2001 to an '08 figure that will struggle to reach 10 million.

Pondering all this could either make you look longingly at the ledge or flip the script and view the whole situation in a glass-half-full kinda way. Being an optimist, I've decided to go the latter route, and so hereby offer a modest proposal for redefining success in our new age of austerity.

Gazing down the Billboard 200, I've established a fresh standard for a smash, or even for a hit. In calibrating this, I axed any albums that have lingered on Billboard's list for more than a year, as they essentially date from another, happier era. (Only a few entries qualify, including Nickelback's "All the Right Reasons," which has sold nearly 7 million copies but started its run nearly three years ago, and Daughtry's self-titled debut, which sold 4.2 million copies but began moving product nearly two years back.)

Shorn of those entries, there's just one act on the current top 200 that has broken the 3 million mark (Alicia Keys). Even the most hyped and exposed of albums of '08 - like Mariah Carey's "E=MC2" and Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" - haven't been able to reach the 2 million bar. Given this, here's how we should evaluate top sales now.

THE NEW DEFINITIONS...

BLOCKBUSTER: 2 MILLION & UP

The equivalent of 5 million, or more, back in 2000

Alicia Keys "As I Am" 3.6 million

Lil Wayne "Tha Carter III" 2.6M

Carrie Underwood "Carnival Ride" 2.3M

Kid Rock "Rock n Roll Jesus" 2.1M

Rascal Flatts "Still Feels Good" 2M

SMASH: 1 MILLION & UP

The equivalent of 3 million in 2000

Garth Brooks "Ultimate Hits" 1.9 million

Chris Brown "Exclusive" 1.81M

Coldplay "Viva la Vida" 1.81M

Jack Johnson "Sleep Throughthe Static" 1.4M

Leona Lewis "Spirit" 1.18M

Metallica "Death Magnetic" 1.11M (in just four weeks)

Mariah Carey "E=MC2" 1.1M

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss "Raising Sand" 1.09M

"Mamma Mia!" soundtrack 1.05M

Usher "Here I Stand" 1.04M

"Camp Rock" soundtrack 1.034M

Led Zeppelin "Mothership" 995,000

The Jonas Brothers "A Little Bit Longer" 992,000

Miley Cyrus "Breakout" 953,000

Jordin Sparks "Jordin Sparks" 932,833

Sugarland "Love on the Inside" 922,000

HIT: 500,000 & UP

The equivalent of a million-selling, platinum CD in 2000

"Alvin and the Chipmunks" soundtrack 876,772

OneRepublic "Dreaming Out Loud" 791,000

Disturbed "Indestructible" 756,000

Rick Ross "Trilla" 684,000

Madonna "Hard Candy" 654,000

Keith Urban "Greatest Hits" 632,000

Radiohead "In Rainbows" 625,000

George Strait "Troubador" 579,000

3 Doors Down "3 Doors Down" 578,000

Seether "Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces" 559,000

Alan Jackson "Good Time" 552,000

Danity Kane "Welcome to the Dollhouse" 546,000

Duffy "Rockferry" 528,000

Plies "Definition of Real" 520,000

Young Jeezy "The Recession" 516,000

Trace Adkins "Greatest Hits Volume 2" 508,000

jfarber@nydailynews.com

"Discipline" wasn't been mentioned so does it mean FLOP?

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Guest nothingfails0603
"Discipline" wasn't been mentioned so does it mean FLOP?

last I heard, Discipline was around 420,000. It's doing about 1000 a week because of the tour

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