In the wake of Kid Rock finding success by holding his album back from iTunes while having a fairly big radio hit, Kid’s label Atlantic Records decided to experiment with the Kid’s strategy, pulling the British singer Estelle’s album Shine from the iTunes Store two weeks ago. The move, which was ostensibly made in order to boost sales of the album after the success of its lead single, the Kanye West-assisted “American Boy,” resulted in sales of the album dropping 16%, then experiencing a 9% gain last week. Meanwhile, “Boy” plummeted to No. 57 on the Hot 100 last week; there, it suffered the indignity of being beat out by its own inferior insta-cover, which had the advantage of being available on the store. Perhaps that was just embarrassing enough for Atlantic to restore the album on iTunes; yesterday when I opened up the online-music destination, there was a huge ad for Shine in the middle of the store’s splash page.
Yes, the album’s back just in time for the release of iTunes 8, and the fact that its return was so splashy made me wonder just what sort of back-room wrangling went on to get the album back on the store’s virtual shelves. (I haven’t seen any egregious placement of Estelle songs on iTunes’ Pandora-like “Genius” feature yet, but give it time.) But is the marketing really working? “American Boy” is No. 21 on the singles chart, just ahead of David Archuleta’s “Crush”; meanwhile, the album has squeaked back into the store’s chart at No. 97. Me, I’m just hoping that this means we’re going to avoid a rerun of the “Rockers As New Zeppelins” phase that Chris Molanphy outlined in this space two weeks ago.
iTunes [apple.com]
Earlier: Once More, With Loathing: Are Labels Moving To Kill The Single Again?
@Elijah-M: I’m going to guess, based on what I know of Billboard’s iTunes policy, that only hitting “Download All” at eMusic would be triggered as an album purchase. Anything else counts as a single.
It’s a pretty simple concept, really (even if the tallying is sometimes complicated): only a bundle of songs by one artist sold under one album title counts as an album. And you have to buy the whole thing. If you buy nine songs off a 10-song album, one by one, you haven’t bought the album.
(I’m not even sure if you bought all 10 songs a la carte that that would count as buying the album, either. I think you have to click whatever the “Buy Album” or “Download All” button is.)
Question: if I buy just “American Boy” on the iTunes page, that counts for the singles charts, right? Then why do some acts have listings for both their album and the singles off their album (which are invariably one track and don’t include any b-sides)?
@MrStarhead: Good question. I should cover this in the column sometime. (I touch on it partway through a couple of my old columns — here and here.)
First off, when you buy an a la carte song at iTunes — any song, even an album cut — it’s reported to SoundScan as a song sale, not a partial album or an EP or anything like that. An iTunes sale is only reported to SS/Billboard as an album or EP if it is purchased as a “bundle.”
Like you say, when an act and its label decide to release an advance single, it generally goes to iTunes as a standalone one-song release (sometimes with a “B-side,” but even that’s become rare). That advance release then often becomes duplicative later, when the album and its a la carte songs are released. Some acts/labels will clean up their store presence by deleting the single version after the album’s out, sometimes not. They’ll do this especially if the single isn’t any different from the album cut. (Drastically different mixes/edits, such as the much shorter versions of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” or Death Cab’s “I Will Possess Your Heart” hang around the iTunes Store much longer.) It’s better for everybody when duplicative singles are removed–the consumer is less confused, and the label and SoundScan have fewer versions of a hit song to keep track of. At the height of Lil Wayne’s dominance early this summer, there were as many as four versions of “Lollipop” making iTunes’ bestsellers list every week, making it a pain to compile the song’s total sales every week.
One last, interesting wrinkle: As of very recently–Apple introduced the feature last year, but it’s definitely only come of age in label strategies this year–you can use iTunes’ Complete My Album feature to buy the album associated with a prerelease single at the 99-cents-off price. That is, even if you bought the standalone prerelease single with different artwork; iTunes is smart enough to know that the “Lollipop” you bought back in April is part of Tha Carter III, even though the April single is listed as part of the “album” “Lollipop - Single.” Weirdly, I just found out from Billboard last week that when you do this, your previous purchase of the single is tallied as a return of that single and an instant, subsequent purchase of the album, which then gets tallied by SoundScan as a full-album sale. It’s a little strange, but I can see for accounting/tracking purposes why they do that.
So: If you buy “Lollipop” in single form, its lifetime total sales as a single go up by one. Then, two months later, if you use Complete My Album to buy Carter III, the lifetime sales of “Lollipop” are reduced by one sale, and the lifetime sales (and tally for that week) of the album increase by one.
@Chris Molanphy:
Thanks for the great insight. I didn’t know that Apple had smartened up the “Complete my Album” process (thought it was an intentional screw to force the additional album purchase).
As someone who bought (and likes) the Estelle album, I’m really pissed that Atlantic’s cut her legs out from under her in some strange “if they can’t find the single, they’ll buy the album” experiment. Try that crap with the established artist’s “lost in the wilderness” album.
@Chris Molanphy: How does eMusic figure into this? Since they offer everything a-la-carte, does it only count as an album purchase if I download everything (or if I click on “Download All,” as opposed to downloading the whole album in more than one visit to the site)? Or if an album has twelve tracks, do twelve randomly downloaded tracks, downloaded by multiple users - regardless of what they are, or which tracks are duplicated by those users - count as an album? Or is it none of the above?
Is it me, or does this make the concept of sales-based charts seem arbitrary and pointless?
@Halfwit: I think the “if they can’t find the single, they’ll buy the album” experiment may actually be a valid strategy with established artists who already have a dedicated fan base. Their big mistake here was to try it with a new artist who most people are hearing for the first time. I also wonder if such an experiment could be successful if done with smaller releases. I think $10, or even $8 is a lot to spend on a complete album by an artist who - as far as I know - has only made one song that I actually like. $3 for a four song EP, on the other hand, wouldn’t feel outrageous at all.
are albums that even chart available on emusic?
Off the top of my head, the following albums charted, and are available on eMusic:
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Cat Power - Jukebox
I’m sure there are a lot more, especially if you’re looking at the whole top 200. You don’t need to sell as much now as you did ten years ago to end up in the charts.