If the CD is so popular that it sells 227,000 in a week (one to me), how come they only shifted 10,000 downloads?

Not only are albums still far behind in downloads but I sense a huge popular smash album that does 227,000 on CD today but only 10,000 downloaded may only sell 100,000 in total in a few years when it's all downloads.

I've been to an AM gig and they have a very young audience...when you consider download sales online are still pretty much credit card centric, I would say those figures sound about right to me.

In other words, despite the availability of pre-pay credit cards, like https://www.3vcash.com/, which is great for safer online shopping or even mobile phone SMS payments - which is a bit clunky for transactions larger than 2 or 3 quid - their main fan base would be cash-in-hand kids.

Doing a cross comparison of physical/download single sales might be more telling...buying a song using a mobile phone (SMS) is very simple and convenient.

By the way...was the album only available in CD format?

If it was, I'm surprised...the AM strike me as a band that would shift a lot of vinyl.

The CD (or a new physical format) will be around longer than paid downloads, at least paid album downloads.

Very unimpressed by the CD packaging; far too "cool and arty" artwork, no lyrics at all (and words are their strong point) and worst of all, no humour (remember how effective their humour was at the Brits?).

JK2006 wrote:
If the CD is so popular that it sells 227,000 in a week (one to me), how come they only shifted 10,000 downloads?


Thats why they had so many entries in this weeks singles chart, JK - the kids were buying individual tracks rather than the "album".

But check the CHartics thread ITK; to get into those low chart singles slots you're talking hundreds of downloads, not even thousands.

Could be that for this long awaited album they actually saved up their paper-round money and bought the actual album?

Apart from singles... as in what used to be CD singles... CDs do still shift more than downloads overall.

Apart from old farts like me who bought a download once and didn't like it... there are still many reasons why young farts want plastic.

And why put the lyrics in a CD package these days? They'll be all over the web.

------------------------------
Blunder inadvertantly gave band chart domination

Arctic Monkeys' unprecedented chart success this week was caused partly by a mistake made by the iTunes Music Store.
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according to nme.com full article linked.


http://www.nme.com/news/arctic-monkeys/28152

Re cd`s containing a lyric book Bemuso, which I rarely open myself, I asked as many people as I could if we should be putting lyrics in with the few physical releases we do.
The results surprised me, it was an overwhelming yes please.

Mart wrote:
Re cd`s containing a lyric book Bemuso, which I rarely open myself, I asked as many people as I could if we should be putting lyrics in with the few physical releases we do.
The results surprised me, it was an overwhelming yes please.

But aren't you simply asking "would you like something else for free?" ... to which most people would answer "yes, please"?

As a lyric person (anyone listening to my melodies can spot that - Everyone's Gone To The Moon still sounds melodically like Three Old Ladies Got Locked In The Lavatory to me) I get furious if lyrics AREN'T included in packaging.
I even put them in singles packs!

No MM, I`m not at all.
I know a lot of people who have trouble picking the lyrics out, although they love the music.
With a lot of acts you simply can`t hear every written and cherished lyric, from voices we love and buy.

If the cd is to survive as a format, it still needs to retain peruseabilty on a bus as well.
I realise putting a booklet in with our next release is a pain, what I tried in the eighties was the selling of a lyric book to accompany the vinyl release, which I still think is a nice idea if the books are limited and numbered.
But as was said earlier, the lyrics can be on a free site in a week and there is nothing we can do about it.

I like extra goodies.

More in the vinyl days when there was a booklet included that was cool.

Printing costs have dropped significantly and if you can "add value" to your product by including inserts and extras you'd please me.

I think lyrics, biogs and stuff give the buyer a sense of being included which helps turn them from a buyer into a fan.