Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Madonna makes History! MDNA has the Largest Drop in Sales of All Time


Once the initial hype of MDNA wore off, reality set in. Madonna's 8th release hit rock bottom.
After a promising start, topping the Billboard 200 chart in its first week with 359,000 copies sold, Madonna's MDNA is expected to suffer an 88 percent drop in sales to 46,000 according to Forbes. The album's steep decline would set the record for biggest second week drop in history.

Many are questioning whether the option for fans to purchase the album as part of a tour ticket package skewed the initial numbers reported by Billboard Magazine. With 185,000 copies sold as part of this deal, only 179,000 can constitute individual album sales. Had these been the final numbers reported, the album wouldn't have topped the US charts in its first week after all. Rather, Lionel Richie would have taken the crown for selling 199,000 copies of his latest album, Tuskegee.
So it was a gimmick; which paid off, but gives some truth about the sales of this sorry CD. I guess this is not the news she wanted out in public... Oh well, maybe this will prompt her to do better.

source

5 comments:

Cubby said...

The best artist is a hungry artist, and she's not hungry.

Anonymous said...

she considered old. Next!

K. Clark said...

@Luciferosiriarnold: Ouch! Ageist much?

Madonna stan that I am, I'll admit I'm not surprised by the drop, but I don't think this is due to musical quality (not every song on MDNA sets my heart on fire, but I genuinely like most of it).

American radio hasn't played her music consistently since Ray Of Light, which of course is partly because of her age. Since radio play creates hit chart singles her album sales are going to suffer, as they would for any artist (i.e. Beyonce's 4 when "Run The World" didn't catch fire immediately).

It's probably why she's signed with Live Nation and put all her energy into touring the last decade or so. By the way, Prince did the same CD/tour bundling package with his "Musicology" album, so Madge wasn't the first one to go that route. And need we mention Gaga and Amazon?

Either way, it's not like she's hard up for cash lol.

Bruno Laliberté said...

I got her CD and while I like a few tracks, can't say this is her best. I don't much care for the new musical direction and collaboration, nor the kind of lyrics. That's not our girl!!
But I'm not worried. She'll bounce back.
:)~
HUGZ

WilsonW said...

Maybe she doesn't.....sigh...are we at a point that we can accept that certain artists may just not be relevant to current younger audiences. I mean Stevie Wonder is(was) a genius. But his newest stuff is far from his best and far from relevant. He is and will always be a genius and huge contributor to the music world. But his time has passed. Maybe the same is true of the Madonna's and Janet Jackson's. Don't get me wrong I love me some Janet. But maybe the shift has occurred and they are just not relevant anymore. It seems really weird to me to hear Janet singing about putting someone on her favorites or about hitting clubs all the time, same with Madonna. Just let it go.

In much the same way that the Motown sound morphed into Disco, but couldn't transition into the hip hop and rap genre. The same can potentially be said of our music tastes. As much as I miss the heart and soul of the music I grew up with. I just had to realize that current stations aren't going to play music that works for my ears. I'm slowly but surely listening to current radio less and listening to oldies but goodies and neosoul stations more and more. Gurl, we are getting old and so are they. They just need to realize it. The only genre of music that seems to stay relatively the same is country.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.