I haven’t reported much on the album charts lately, because, frankly, “another sucky week of sucky sales” isn’t really news, and really there needs to be a move toward a better way of gauging popular interest in music, if only because actually going out to buy an album is an experience that fewer and fewer people are even able to engage in, let along want to. But the news that Grizzly Bear’s much-hyped, long-ago-leaked Veckatimest had landed in the top 10 this week is notable, if only because of a note buried in this week’s Billboard story running down the mag’s top albums:
Indie rock band Grizzly Bear is having its best week ever as its third full-length studio set, “Veckatimest,” arrives at No. 8 with 33,000. That’s the first album to chart on the Billboard 200 for the Massachusetts band and it also gives the quartet its best sales week. 40% of its sales came from downloads while another 24% were shifted at independent and small chain stores.
So, 40% of its sales–roughly 13,000 of them–came from downloads… and conveniently, Veckatimest was a mere $3.99 at Amazon MP3 last week. Now, the Top Digital Albums chart doesn’t break out data by store, and as anyone who glances at the Internet knows, the album was given kudos in almost every quarter of the Internet that fancies itself a place where “important” music gets discussed. But given that similarly lauded bands have seen monetary resistance to their recorded efforts, isn’t Amazon’s low price point at least worth noting? Especially as people figure out how to finance records that, like Veckatimest, took a notable effort to put together, that probably won’t be on the ever-shrinking music-centric shelves at Wal-Mart (although hey, if it is, kudos to whatever distributor hooked that up), and that can’t be paid for by just simply “making it back on the road”?
Eminem Stays Atop Billboard 200; Grizzly Bear, Manson Debut Top 10 [Billboard]
I don’t think I’d ever heard Grizzly Bear described as a ‘Massachusetts band’ before.
God almighty, this band sucks. I wish I could be more articulate than that, but I am so overwhelmed with fear that the current generation of indie rockers might blow away in a stiff breeze that I cannot.
@bcapirigi: Hee. That’s what I was thinking, too.
$3.99 is way, way too low for an entire album download. I’d put it at $5.99 or 6, but $3.99 seems awfully low, sucky record sales be damned.
@bcapirigi: that’s because 99% of the people writing about them forego factual descriptors in favor of more, er, sploogy ones.
@bcapirigi: Is it supposed to be a slur, like “Massachusetts liberal”?
I’ve definitely purchased albums from amazon’s mp3 store enticed solely by the low price. Including the new Green Day and Chrisette Michele.
@Varina: We can talk about tweaking the price point of the discounted MP3 model once ‘the average consumer’ starts again thinking of music and something to be bought. It’s a sale, but it’s also a PR move.
Plenty of non-Grizzly Bear bands have cheap downloads out there and don’t sell poo. The 3.99 helps, but being Grizzly Bear and getting that press helped too. This was just a cherry on top to fans, I’d say.
And @howdoIsay… yeah I have, too, especially with records like that that I might not have purchased or even downloaded.