Rodze
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Post by Rodze on Nov 17, 2011 17:50:55 GMT -5
Yawn.
Correcting myself: Apparently SoundScan will not add the paid sales Billboard are ignoring to their total at all.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Nov 17, 2011 18:01:27 GMT -5
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Nov 29, 2011 10:13:35 GMT -5
Yesterday was Cyber Monday.
Amazon had some albums on sale for $1.99. So did Android Market...
Since they fall below the new $3.49 price point, these sales will not be included in the Billboard 200 next week.
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HolidayGuy
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Posts: 33,882
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 10:14:52 GMT -5
^Isn't it that sales do not count only if the <$3.49 sale occurs in a title's first four weeks of release?
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Nov 29, 2011 10:35:45 GMT -5
^That's right.
All these rules...
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syrus
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Post by syrus on Nov 29, 2011 12:48:00 GMT -5
These rules are stupid and we have anti-Gaga fans to blame for it.
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Post by Adonis the DemiGod! on Nov 29, 2011 12:50:07 GMT -5
^Isn't it that sales do not count only if the <$3.49 sale occurs in a title's first four weeks of release? That's what it says.
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 12:50:52 GMT -5
^ It may have been "stupid" for Amazon to lose as much money as it did when selling a brand-new full-length album for 99 cents- we don't know if it made up that loss via other sales, whatnot, but on the surface, it just put the pricing situation under a microscope.
Billboard's new rules are fine.
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syrus
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Post by syrus on Nov 29, 2011 13:17:20 GMT -5
No one forced those 400,000 people to buy the album for 99 cents. Folks were calling it "cheating" and "giving it away for free" and that wasn't the case.
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 13:25:02 GMT -5
^I agree about that- it's not "cheating." But, as said, it did put the 99-cents marketing thing under a microscope. And it's not the most fair for one album to be priced at 99 cents and others at prices not even close to that amount. Not counting sales for albums <$3.49 in its first four weeks of release is a good move- that way, we may not see such marketing strategies in the first four weeks of an album's release. Because if Amazon wanted to do something like that in the future, I imagine a record label would fight it, as those sales will not count toward the chart.
The 99-cents deal is great for the consumers, but terrible from a business perspective.
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2011 13:42:43 GMT -5
Yeah, Amazon lost over $3 million with that Gaga deal, though that's probably not much for a major corporation..
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 13:45:25 GMT -5
On the one hand, though, digital copies do not have the manufacturing costs of physical units. But, with the label paying to manufacture CDs, would Amazon's loss have been even greater if it sold physical copies at 99 cents? :o
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Nov 29, 2011 13:51:23 GMT -5
^I agree about that- it's not "cheating." But, as said, it did put the 99-cents marketing thing under a microscope. And it's not the most fair for one album to be priced at 99 cents and others at prices not even close to that amount. Not counting sales for albums <$3.49 in its first four weeks of release is a good move- that way, we may not see such marketing strategies in the first four weeks of an album's release. Because if Amazon wanted to do something like that in the future, I imagine a record label would fight it, as those sales will not count toward the chart. The 99-cents deal is great for the consumers, but terrible from a business perspective. I can't help but wonder what ways a label could fight a retailer from doing that if the retailer are actually paying the label full price and accepting a loss, like Amazon did.
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NeRD
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Post by NeRD on Nov 29, 2011 14:03:54 GMT -5
Gaga got so lucky! :o
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2011 14:04:09 GMT -5
It's not like they're that off. It's obvious that the rule is because of the Amazon discount.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2011 14:23:25 GMT -5
Depends if labels care more about the amount of dollars they make or about the actual number of copies sold (by BB's rules). If it's the latter, I could see labels refusing to ship to a retailer that wants to sell at such a low price. As it only eats into SS totals (people that were originally going to buy it all full price are going to buy it a discounted price instead- consumers will almost always opt to go for a cheaper price- But under the BB rule, their purchase won't count!) What if, for example, it gets to the point where a label is so sick Amazon selling their releases and it not counting, that they decide to ban Amazon entirely from selling ALL of their releases. I really hope that doesn't happen, though, becuase limiting the avilability of albums is just going to lose casual customers and kill album sales even further. It's the retailers (namely Amazon) that need to abide by the BB rule, otherwise they'll just be contributing to the death of the album market by selling copies that won't count, and taking away customers that were originally going to buy ones that were
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Chelsea Press 2
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Post by Chelsea Press 2 on Nov 29, 2011 15:44:57 GMT -5
Yeah, Amazon lost over $3 million with that Gaga deal, though that's probably not much for a major corporation.. Along with some damage to their reputation and a loss of customers. Some customers were very angry with the way Amazon's customer service handled the problems people had with getting the album and that translated into a small number of them leaving. Sure, Amazon will get tons of new customers to replace them. But this situation helped to expose some of the vulnerabilities of Amazon. Should something like that Gaga promotion ever happen again, Amazon could be better prepared, but if they don't learn from it and prepare, a major outage could really cause customers to leave and it could start to affect their bottom line. I have come across several people, and know several personally who will not shop there anymore because they didn't get their money back, nor did they ever get their album to properly download during that promotion or after. Now it's only $0.99, but it's the principle of it that bothered them more.
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 17:58:56 GMT -5
I wonder why a rule was put into effect for individual tracks, though- we haven't seen anything lower than 69 cents at iTunes, and that's for catalog titles. The lowest for newer tracks has been 99 cents- not sure if other outlets like Amazon was selling newer tracks for lower than 99 cents?
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Verisimilitude
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Post by Verisimilitude on Nov 29, 2011 18:03:47 GMT -5
Mary J. Blige's album sales are going to be much lower on Soundscan because her album was sold on Amazon for $1.99!
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 18:11:43 GMT -5
Anyone else have such a pricing deal last week?
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Verisimilitude
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Post by Verisimilitude on Nov 29, 2011 18:12:58 GMT -5
Anyone else have such a pricing deal last week? Maroon 5 and GaGa, from what I've heard of but they'll be unaffected from this new rule change.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Nov 29, 2011 18:14:46 GMT -5
It's not like they're that off. It's obvious that the rule is because of the Amazon discount. They spun it to make it sound like she was responsible. The album was involved, yes, but her and her label had nothing to do with it. It was Amazon, not Gaga and not her label. The entire article is pretty much taken out of context and manipulated. Though looking at the writer's other pieces, you can tell he's not right in the head.
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Black Jesus
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Post by Black Jesus on Nov 29, 2011 18:22:06 GMT -5
Anyone else have such a pricing deal last week? Maroon 5 and GaGa, from what I've heard of but they'll be unaffected from this new rule change. I believe both albums were around $5, meaning they'll be unaffected.
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Verisimilitude
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Post by Verisimilitude on Nov 29, 2011 18:23:52 GMT -5
From HDD
COUNTING ON SOUNDSCAN: With Billboardβs decision last week that only albums selling for more than $3.49 and singles over 39 cents will count on their charts, both Google and Amazon launched $1.99 specials on a variety of albums, including the new Mary J. Blige as well as Lady Gaga and LMFAO. According to the rules, those discounted releases which have been out for more than four weeks (i.e. Gaga and LMFAO) will have those sales numbers included in their chart totals. Blige will not. (11/29p)
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Nov 29, 2011 18:52:07 GMT -5
Will Billboard be up on ALL of the special discount sales? Otherwise, how exactly will it be able to distinguish how much an album sold for at a particular time?
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Post by Adonis the DemiGod! on Nov 30, 2011 0:15:59 GMT -5
I personally have always thought sales should be the total amount of cash collected and not determined by units. They can do units for RIAA certifications but for chart popularity purposes price should be a factor. How much someone is willing to pay for something is a function of how popular a record is.
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