DIGITAL SALES-Week Ending 5\/29\/11<\/p>\n
102. Steven Tyler "(It) Feels So Good"
Sales this week: 20,502
Percentage change: -35.4
Cume: 128,895<\/p>\n
Uh-oh.\u00c2\u00a0 Could it be that despite the accolades, Steven Tyler is even worse off than he was before "American Idol"?<\/p>\n
I’d posit he is.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for a large paycheck.<\/p>\n
He was a caricature on TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Of a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 He almost appeared to be a Steven Tyler doll.\u00c2\u00a0 But that didn’t keep all the prognosticators from fawning over him.<\/p>\n
But put these same writers and talking heads in a drug den with Steven and they’d puke and run like hell (just like in the Pink Floyd song!)<\/p>\n
In other words, what are you selling?<\/p>\n
Steven Tyler and Aerosmith were selling great music and danger.\u00c2\u00a0 The band was living close to the flame, on the edge. But now he’s all cuddly, the new Ozzy, and although one Aerosmith tour might go well, the bloom is off the rose.\u00c2\u00a0 Who wants to see THAT guy?<\/p>\n
Steven Tyler is the real deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Be in his presence and you can feel the charisma.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s smart.\u00c2\u00a0 He makes you tingle, whether a boy or a girl.\u00c2\u00a0 But putting him on TV is like…all those has-beens going on "Dancing With The Stars".\u00c2\u00a0 It smells of last chance desperation.<\/p>\n
Sure, people will watch.<\/p>\n
But they shoot horses, don’t they?<\/p>\n
Now if Tyler is at the end, wants to cash out and call it a day, that’s his prerogative.\u00c2\u00a0 But whatever he was selling has now taken a giant hit.<\/p>\n
In other words, do you want to be Tom Waits or Steven Tyler?<\/p>\n
You get to choose.\u00c2\u00a0 You make career choices every day.\u00c2\u00a0 Are you playing for the long haul or just momentary cash and accolades?\u00c2\u00a0 Notice that Dave Matthews didn’t play the "Idol" finale.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, a lot of people would see him, but it would cheapen his act.\u00c2\u00a0 And those who truly care would be turned off.\u00c2\u00a0 Because if you want to play forever, you’ve got to play to the core.<\/p>\n
And Aerosmith hasn’t played to the core in a very long time.\u00c2\u00a0 Their manager has them on a scorched earth tour, with prices too high and appearances too frequent.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the rest of the band can bring Tyler back to sanity, can drag him in the right direction, but if you don’t think Tyler’s appearance on "American Idol" hurt him more than helped him, you know nothing about rock and roll.<\/p>\n
As for the track not being good enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t you get it?\u00c2\u00a0 Aerosmith hasn’t released a reasonable cut in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 Tyler needed to blow the core away, with a hard-edged romp, a searing ballad that makes you shiver.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t about cutting a hit, but showing the core he still had it.<\/p>\n
He didn’t do this.<\/p>\n
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Right now, Tyler’s track is #114 at the iTunes Store<\/p>\n
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Right now, Dave Matthews Band’s "Live At Wrigley Field" is number 13 on the iTunes chart.\u00c2\u00a0 What, you didn’t know DMB had a new live album?\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t made for you, but fans, who flock to this constant stream of authorized live releases. You can’t release too much music for a fan.<\/p>\n
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Right now, Adele’s "21" is #1 on the iTunes Chart, eclipsing yesterday’s new release, Eddie Vedder’s "Ukulele Songs". Lady GaGa’s special edition is #3, the regular GaGa edition, without bonus tracks, resides at #11 on the chart.<\/p>\n
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Adele’s "Rolling In The Deep" is the number one digital track.\u00c2\u00a0 It sold 254,495 copies last week.\u00c2\u00a0 For a cume of 3,218,988.<\/p>\n
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Lady GaGa sold 662,021 digital albums last week.<\/p>\n
Adele sold 38,587 digital albums last week.<\/p>\n
Adele has sold 842,349 digital albums.\u00c2\u00a0 She has sold 1,974,306 albums total.<\/p>\n
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Mumford & Sons has sold 1,487,747 albums since release.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re #10 on the chart.<\/p>\n
Katy Perry has sold 1,499,973 copies of her album "Teenage Dream" since release, it’s #19 on the chart.<\/p>\n
Mumford’s album has been out for 67 weeks.<\/p>\n
Katy’s album has been out for 40 weeks.<\/p>\n
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Zac Brown’s second Atlantic album, "You Get What You Give", has sold 935,254 copies in 36 weeks, it’s number 23 on the chart.<\/p>\n
Zac’s first Atlantic album, "Foundation, has sold 2,621,766 copies in 132 weeks, it’s number 67 on the chart.<\/p>\n
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Stevie Nicks’s album has sold 97,379 copies to date.\u00c2\u00a0 It sold 9,933 last week.\u00c2\u00a0 Guess there’s no "Dancing With The Stars" bounce.\u00c2\u00a0 Stevie needs to get down in the trenches with her fans.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s got to do what hungry artists do, go on tour and play night after night, tweet, Facebook…\u00c2\u00a0 She just doesn’t care enough, she just doesn’t want to work that hard.<\/p>\n
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The Cars reunion album has sold 60,020 copies to date.<\/p>\n
One can only ask one question…WHY?<\/p>\n
Why did they make it?<\/p>\n
I hope Ric Ocasek made it for himself.\u00c2\u00a0 Because he’s the only one who’s going to hear it.<\/p>\n
Doesn’t matter who you are, you’ve got to sell your album today.\u00c2\u00a0 And that involves more than going on tour and posting your record to iTunes.\u00c2\u00a0 And in order to succeed today, your music has to be as good or better as your work of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point when someone hears it they go WOW!\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to the new Cars material, one does not say wow, one says…huh.\u00c2\u00a0 Sounds like the Cars, so what?<\/p>\n
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Tyler The Creator.\u00c2\u00a0 65,467 copies sold after 3 weeks, #63 on the chart.\u00c2\u00a0 If print hype meant anything, this album would be #1.\u00c2\u00a0 But "The New York Times" doesn’t sell records, nor does any other newspaper.\u00c2\u00a0 You reach people online.\u00c2\u00a0 Through their friends.<\/p>\n
Stunningly, Tyler The Creator places not a single track in last week’s Digital Sales chart.<\/p>\n
The overhype has not helped here.\u00c2\u00a0 Now everybody’s from Missouri, the "Show-Me" state.\u00c2\u00a0 Better to uncover this by oneself, and pass along the word.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, all publicity is not good publicity, overhype can negatively impact your project.<\/p>\n
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Avenged Sevenfold has sold 535,198 copies of "Nightmare" after 44 weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s more albums than Jennifer Lopez will ever sell (156,407 after 4 weeks, #18 on the chart).\u00c2\u00a0 That’s almost as many as Chris Brown (582,554 after 10 weeks, #28 on the chart), and I guarantee you most people have no clue who Avenged Sevenfold is, never mind know its music. Avenged Sevenfold has got fans.\u00c2\u00a0 Diehard, active ones.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Arcade Fire’s "Suburbs" has been out one week less than Avenged Sevenfold’s album, and is two numbers higher on the chart, 102 to 104, but has sold only 634,098 copies, despite winning that Grammy for…what was it, "Album Of The Year"?<\/p>\n
You think everybody’s paying attention to what you’re doing.<\/p>\n
No, they’re paying attention to what’s interesting to them.<\/p>\n
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DIGITAL SALES-Week Ending 5\/29\/11 102. Steven Tyler "(It) Feels So Good"Sales this week: 20,502Percentage change: -35.4Cume: 128,895 Uh-oh.\u00c2\u00a0 Could it be that despite the accolades, Steven Tyler is even worse off than he was before "American Idol"? I’d posit he is.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for a large paycheck. He was a caricature on TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Of a rock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-16m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4239,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions\/4239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}