First Week Phonies

By now everyone has seen the undeniably fabricated first week sales numbers of Lil’ Wayne’s latest album. Personally, when I heard the final tally I had visions of Rick Ross and Jay-Z, both of whom were given a sizable sales boost by virtue of their own label picking up a large number of their albums to create inflated numbers. Let’s set the record straight; there is no way in an industry where the biggest of artists are down 60% and rap artists, on average, are down even more, that Lil’ Wayne not only didn’t go down in sales, but went up by over 100% from his previous effort. There’s an old pro wrestling term for the folks who believe Wayne’s first week numbers are real; marks. This post isn’t going to be about all the ways I feel those numbers have been falsified, though, rather I’m going to turn my attention to the actual importance of first week sales numbers and why, in the long run, we’d all be better off if we didn’t know them.

For all the important statistics Soundscan has been providing record labels for the past 17 years none has been more overrated than first week sales. If you look at the importance placed on where a record debuts since Soundscan’s inception in 1991 you can also see a parallel in the downturn in the quality of the music. Artists and their labels have gone from making music to attempting to make a sales splash which, in turn, has resulted in a music listening public being force fed some truly awful tunes all under the covert sales pitch of “it debuted at #1,” or the classic cliché “it shipped gold” (how many times did we hear that about a rap album in the 90’s!?!?)

If you look at pre-Soundscan music history artists used to work hard to push their albums for literally years, not just one week. They would release multiple singles and build an audience and, in turn, sales over a period of time. There was a long term vision for each artist (or at least most artists) and the labels saw that and recognized there was money to be made that way. Today only a handful of artists still work the singles game correctly to create album sales. Fergie, Daughtry and Nickleback all stayed in Billboard’s Top 20 for over a full year, the latter sticking around for TWO years. Hate on them all you want, but THAT is an accomplishment. There is also a long list of albums that have ended up going multi-platinum without ever hitting #1. Once again, it’s all about building an audience, not making a quick buck.

The idea of taking one’s time with an album doesn’t necessarily fit into today’s iTunes - first week sales numbers - if the first single doesn’t hit you won’t get another chance - music industry. It should, though. That is, if the industry wants to survive. The age of an album shouldn’t have anything to do with how hard you push it, and this goes for artists, both mainstream and independent, as well as labels. The only thing anyone should be concerned about is whether the album in question is good. If your album is good it doesn’t matter how old it is, and if you don’t feel it’s good you probably shouldn’t have released it in the first place.

There is one very easy way to bring those ideals back again, but what I’m about to suggest may not fly in an instant information age. I think it would do a world of good if we delayed sales numbers by a full month. This way when Lil’ Wayne, or anyone (I don’t mean to pick on Wayne, he’s just an obvious example right now), releases an album the question people will have of it during its second and third weeks of release won’t be “how much did it sell,” or “what was his sales drop from week one to week two,” but rather “is it any good?” And when the sales numbers eventually come out they won’t have that huge of an affect on the way people feel about the record because most folks will have come to a conclusion about it based on the musical merits of the album. In an era where sales numbers are at an all-time low this is an idea the industry should strongly consider. Significantly more artists are being hurt today rather than helped by people looking at sales numbers and labels need to realize their true return on investment in an artist should be measured over months and years, not days and weeks.

Right now far too many people think of an album’s validity in terms of sales. We need to right that and remind people that sales aren’t the be all and end all of music. If an artist only sells 6,000 albums in their first week it doesn’t make them any less talented than an artist who sells 60,000. Remember, we’re supposed to be enjoying music, not playing a numbers game.