HITS 4/29: Beyonce #1 (663k/500k). Prince #2 (374k/220k)

[areyoureadytojump]

hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=300774

Monday, April 25, 2016

LEMONADE SALES POUR IN (UPDATE)

Beyoncé's new set, Lemonade (Columbia), became available for download on iTunes and Amazon Sunday night; it hit at #1 on the iTunes album chart early Monday morning after sitting one slot below The Very Best of Prince. "Formation," previously unavailable for download, is #2 on the singles chart, behind only "Purple Rain."

A source at Sony says the company expects first-day sales to hit 200k. Early reads say the album could do between 500k-600k first week. Could it go higher?

Physical product is due on 5/6. Tidal will have a permanent exclusive on the streaming front. There is, sources say, no plan to take the album wide on that platform.

[Adam (UTR)]

A PURPLE REIGN AT RETAIL (MONDAY UPDATE)

UPDATE: Prince hit nearly 250k in album sales on Friday and Saturday alone, with The Very Best of Prince approaching 150k. As many as a dozen Prince albums could make our sales chart this week. He's also had 1.5m+ track sales, with "Purple Rain" approaching 200k, "Little Red Corvette" over 100k, and "Let’s Go Crazy," "1999" and "Kiss" all approaching 100k.

Stay tuned for further updates.

(HDD)

[Glove Slap]

Sounds about right. Won't be surprised to see her trend higher, but more importantly I'm curious in how much it sells from TIDAL vs the other retailers.

[Enigma.]

200k in a day doesn't translate necessarily to 600k in a week...but 500k should be reachable.

[Enigma.]

Apr 25, 2016 12:15:41 GMT -5 Glove Slap said:

Sounds about right. Won't be surprised to see her trend higher, but more importantly I'm curious in how much it sells from TIDAL vs the other retailers.

Maybe they won't report the numbers

[areyoureadytojump]

^I'm sure they will. They want to come close to "Beyonce"'s opening number.

[Wave.]

Bish done did it again.

[Your Faves Fave.]

Please outsell SELF-TITLED's first week. Thanks.

[Deleted]

A TIDAL report would virtually be useless anyway. Didn't they claim TLOP had 250 million streams its first day? #chicaadios

Hopefully Bey (and Kanye and Rih) only contractually allowed this exclusivity mess for one album. At his point, even JAY Z knows the company is a mess hence his suit against the people who sold it to him.

500k opening would be an amazing tally- I'm hoping it trends upwards closer to 600k though, especially if 200k is what's expected the first day alone.

[jenglisbe]

Wow. I expected Prince's album sales to be higher.

[kanimal]

Believe the subject line is wrong. Unless I'm misreading, Hits is saying Prince did 150K over the first two days of the tracking week. It'll obviously be more for the whole week.

[jumpb4uthink]

Thrilled for Bey
TvboPrince will 300k+. Me thinks

[anafan]

Good numbers for Beyonce.

[Live Your Life]

Great and well-deserved sales for both, especially after the figures we've seen over the past few weeks.

[Choco]

Beyoncé is doing really well. Seems like most people just waited until it wasn't a TIDAL exclusive anymore.

[J'back]

Yayyyyyy B!
Great numbers.

[felipe]

With so many exclusive releases, what's really the downside for Tidal? Is it much more expensive than other streaming platforms?

[forg]

Great to see some good album sales.
Love her or hate her but it's undeniable how Beyonce is so smart in making her albums an event and looks like each release she is getting stronger critically as well

[Deleted]

Apr 25, 2016 17:22:31 GMT -5 felipe said:

With so many exclusive releases, what's really the downside for Tidal? Is it much more expensive than other streaming platforms?

The downside is for the artists who lose out on potential sales and/or streaming by limiting themselves to a platform with a maligned public image. Tidal's problem isn't so much a downside - from the POV of a platform, product exclusivity is always a good thing - but that the artists giving Tidal this exclusive product still aren't enough to get most people to commit beyond trial periods.

Rihanna is killing the streaming game, Beyonce clearly still has selling power, and Kanye showed he still garners a large amount of immediate interest when widely available. But this all happened after making their albums accessible outside of Tidal - people would rather wait on them than cave in and give Tidal 9.99 or 19.99 a month. It ironically says a lot about their star power in both directions - they have enough of it to get people do throw money at them, but not at this business.

[Glove Slap]

Apr 25, 2016 22:10:10 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Apr 25, 2016 17:22:31 GMT -5 felipe said:

With so many exclusive releases, what's really the downside for Tidal? Is it much more expensive than other streaming platforms?

The downside is for the artists who lose out on potential sales and/or streaming by limiting themselves to a platform with a maligned public image. Tidal's problem isn't so much a downside - from the POV of a platform, product exclusivity is always a good thing - but that the artists giving Tidal this exclusive product still aren't enough to get most people to commit beyond trial periods.

Rihanna is killing the streaming game, Beyonce clearly still has selling power, and Kanye showed he still garners a large amount of immediate interest when widely available. But this all happened after making their albums accessible outside of Tidal - people would rather wait on them than cave in and give Tidal 9.99 or 19.99 a month. It ironically says a lot about their star power in both directions - they have enough of it to get people do throw money at them, but not at this business.

TIDAL is turning out to be exactly what was leveled at it from the launch day: It's a pet project/venture for music's elite, and is doing nothing for the smaller artists like they tried to describe it from their side. They can keep pumping money into this all they want, they certainly have it. Beyonce's about to rake it in from her tour, Madonna already did from hers, Rihanna's getting big checks from Samsung, Puma, and other endorsements, Calvin Harris gets his truckloads from Vegas, Nicki has multiple ventures of her own, etc. None of that is really translating or helping TIDAL become anything other than a tool for that very small group of acts. Their sound quality argument was dumb as hell too because it was pretty much the same reasoning used by executives to dismiss Napster and file sharing at the turn of the millennium because CD quality tracks were higher, leading to them thinking that most people wouldn't settle for lower audio quality. We know how that turned out.

[kanimal]

Apr 25, 2016 17:22:31 GMT -5 felipe said:

With so many exclusive releases, what's really the downside for Tidal? Is it much more expensive than other streaming platforms?

Well, the tide has definitely shifted regarding TIDAL.  Its popularity, usage level and favorability have all jumped greatly in the past few months.  People aren't focusing on the "downside" the way they previously did.

If this is how TIDAL launched - say, with complete, exclusive albums from Kanye, Rihanna, and Beyonce the day it was announced - there wouldn't have been nearly as much negativity.  The reason it struggled out of the gate was that you had this tone-deaf, awkward press conference in which super rich celebrities were pitching a product that had no meaningful unique selling point or value for the end user.  It simply came across as a money grab for the elite, ignoring the two things that actually mattered at the time:  1) what's in it for the user and 2) what's in it for the independent, "normal" artist?

It's still that as it relates to small artists, but at least there's some clear *value* being created for customers.  This "exclusive" thing is clearly resonating.

That said, it will prove difficult to rely on "exclusives" as a long-term strategy if you don't have have ALL the exclusives.  TIDAL is cool right now - it's the only place you can stream Beyonce - but what happens next week when you want to stream the Drake album?  What if you want to listen to Taylor Swift?  You'll apparently only be doing that if you have Apple Music, at least at first.  And so, in that context, TIDAL suddenly becomes worthless -- and Apple suddenly becomes the place to be.

And Apple and Spotify also have two things TIDAL doesn't have:  wider user bases and higher degrees of familiarity.

The whole thing is a catch 22, because exclusives are the best way to differentiate yourself (for all intents and purposes, the broader catalogues, sound quality, interfaces, etc are going to be a wash) but the quest for differentiation means competitive services will want to secure their own exclusives.  That means you'll always be making a trade-off when you sign up for a streaming service.

[grandelf]

Apr 25, 2016 12:59:17 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Wow. I expected Prince's album sales to be higher.

I don't see why, after all, for most people only Purple Rain is remembered, after that he had like one hit per album for a decade and then it was completely over in terms of singles (thankfully in the 2000s he had some decent critical and commercial success with albums). For someone as influential and prolific as he was, he only has a handful of songs that are part of pop culture "memory".

[areyoureadytojump]

These are early estimates for Prince. I would expect higher figures when the final HITS chart is out on Friday.

Prince put out almost an album a year in the 1980/1990s which limited sales really for those albums.

I remember being shocked in 1985 when he released "Raspberry Beret" right after the success of Purple Rain.

These are Prince's SoundScan sales in Sept. 2009 so they are out of date.

www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/267411/ask-billboard-prince-of-album-sales

According to Nielsen SoundScan, here are Prince's top-selling albums, again, since 1991:

2,548,000, "Purple Rain (soundtrack)" (1984) 13xP
2,462,000, "Diamonds and Pearls" (1991) 2xP
2,047,000, "Musicology" (2004) 2xP
1,715,000, "The Hits 2" (1993) 1xP
1,618,000, "The Very Best of Prince" (2001) 1xP
1,433,000, "The Hits 1" (1993) 1xP
1,080,000, "The Love Symbol Album" (1992) 1xP

[Deleted]

Apr 26, 2016 12:43:20 GMT -5 grandelf said:

Apr 25, 2016 12:59:17 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Wow. I expected Prince's album sales to be higher.

I don't see why, after all, for most people only Purple Rain is remembered, after that he had like one hit per album for a decade and then it was completely over in terms of singles (thankfully in the 2000s he had some decent critical and commercial success with albums). For someone as influential and prolific as he was, he only has a handful of songs that are part of pop culture "memory".

Interesting perspective.  I feel like iTunes this past week has been overwhelming proof that he has more than just a handful of songs that are part of pop culture memory.  9 different songs in the top 10 alone.  DOZENS of his songs in the top 50.  6 charted on the upper half of the H100 - and 12 songs charted in the top 50 sales - after only 12 hours of tracking, and there's bound to be more charting this week.

His catalogue of albums all sold/are selling quite well - especially considering how many singles are selling along with them.  MILLIONS.

Nothing about his sales this week are lackluster to me - nor would I ever get the impression (nor do i personally believe) that he only has a handful of memorable songs in pop culture.  From a more objective, showing on the charts perspective, anyway.  Subjectively, we all have our own experience and thoughts on what is memorable and why.

I can't wait to see how it all pans out this week - both in numbers and in chart showings.

[jenglisbe]

Apr 26, 2016 12:43:20 GMT -5 grandelf said:

Apr 25, 2016 12:59:17 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Wow. I expected Prince's album sales to be higher.

I don't see why, after all, for most people only Purple Rain is remembered, after that he had like one hit per album for a decade and then it was completely over in terms of singles (thankfully in the 2000s he had some decent critical and commercial success with albums). For someone as influential and prolific as he was, he only has a handful of songs that are part of pop culture "memory".

By "albums" I was including the hits sets. I didn't expect Lovesexy to sell 200k, but I thought The Very Best Of would sell at least 300k, if not more.

[renfield75]

I also hope, after this burst, that there will be some sustained sales. MJ's hits albums (and Thriller) have been consistent sellers since his death. The same goes for "The Best of Bowie"; it's endured well since his passing. I could see "The Very Best Of Prince" becoming an enduring hits title like those, especially if his work is allowed to remain on YouTube and introduce younger generations to his amazing music.

[pnobelysk]

Apr 26, 2016 16:18:22 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Apr 26, 2016 12:43:20 GMT -5 grandelf said:

I don't see why, after all, for most people only Purple Rain is remembered, after that he had like one hit per album for a decade and then it was completely over in terms of singles (thankfully in the 2000s he had some decent critical and commercial success with albums). For someone as influential and prolific as he was, he only has a handful of songs that are part of pop culture "memory".

By "albums" I was including the hits sets. I didn't expect Lovesexy to sell 200k, but I thought The Very Best Of would sell at least 300k, if not more.

Remember it has limited availability in stores

[Caviar]

Exactly. It isn't like retailers had hundreds of copies of the album sitting on shelves last week. It's even more remarkable all of this is based on ONE SALES DAY. Absolutely amazing.

[areyoureadytojump]

hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=300799

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

PURPLE PREDICTIONS

We'll have a full Top 15 for you tomorrow; in the meantime, here's how much music the late, great Prince (who will have five titles in that rundown) is likely to move on this week's chart. All these titles are on WMG.

The Very Best Of Prince 220-250k album, 360-380k SPS
Purple Rain 115-130k, 125-140k
Hits/B-Sides 50-60k, 75-85k
Ultimate 30-40k, 35-45k
1999 25-30k, 28-32k

Note that single sales have been exploding, and these account for the vast majority of the margin between albums and SPS; streaming is exclusively through Tidal.

[renfield75]

I really hope he gets a 19th top ten album with "Ultimate" and maybe another top 40 album with "Dirty Mind" (which topped out at #45 originally). I suppose "Prince" and "Controversy" could potentially reach new peaks but I don't know if they will make the top 20.