Stevie Nicks Disappointed With Sales Of Her Latest Album
 

Stevie Nicks Disappointed With Sales Of Her Latest Album

On Monday Stevie Nicks Disappointed With Sales Of Her Latest Album was a top story. Here is the recap: (Gibson) Stevie Nicks has spent much of the past two years promoting her solo album, In Your Dreams. Surprisingly, Nicks is now admitting that all the hard work didn't really result in much success sales-wise.

"I didn't sell a lot of records, you guys. For me, for a big act like moi, I didn't," Nicks said via CTV News. "Worldwide I probably sold 300,000 records. It's awesome if you're an unknown artist and you have a hit single, but it's not really that awesome if you're Stevie Nicks."

So, what's the reason for the slow sales? Nicks says it's simply because the music business has changed. "It's such a different age now," she said.

As for the present, Nicks will be on tour with Fleetwood Mac through this fall. So far, she loves the change. "Fleetwood Mac's much more sophisticated and grown up," she said. "And my show is just like a big slumber party in an auditorium." - more on this story

Gibson.com is an official news provider for the antiMusic.com.
Copyright Gibson.com - Excerpted here with permission.

http://www.antimusic.com/news/13/Apr...st_Album.shtml

Maybe Moi should take a good hard look at reality . 10 years of no new music and no change in her the songs she performed , probably turned off a lot of people . and Other artist are selling cds


it not them it's her .

Stevie needs to fact the facts....

• This is NOT 1975.
• Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks are NOT hot new artists.
• 10 years between albums is a joke.
• At this stage in their career, the Mac members are NEVER going to do anything groundbreaking or reinvent themselves, so as good as the music on IYD is, it's nothing new.
• 300,00 copies is a LOT of record sales and will make a lot of money, regardless of your status. Stevie should be happy that people still want to listen to her music and buy her records, unlike a lot of older artists that just hang around the nether regions of the charts
• "but it's not really that awesome if you're Stevie Nicks"....Stevie, I love you, but GET OVER YOURSELF, LOVE!!

Lindsey's solo album sales haven't come CLOSE to that of Stevie's at any point in their careers. Would she rather have similar album sales to him? No. And yet, Lindsey continues to make new music, continues to tour and make regular appearances.

Stevie once said "I would die if I wasn't doing this" and "I don't know how to do anything else". What happened to that girl, hmmm? She wasn't worried about album sales or $$$. She was doing what she loved and people wanted to hear her and see her do it. They still do. She's right in that the music business HAS changed. As she said in Destiny Rules "people are not sitting around smoking dope wondering what the next record they're going to buy is".

In 2013, as the world is today, 300,000 copies is a lot. Stevie continues to sell records, continues to be a popular touring act and people still want to listen to her music. THAT is something to be proud of.

Fully agree with all of the above. If you only squeeze out a new piece of work every ten years, then basically you are trying to make a comeback. If you regularly put stuff out then your fans will stay.

And if you can no longer write, as it seems, since she had Dave Stewart do the music to most of IYD, then hit the vault.

Talking up record sales is definitely something that Stevie's "people" need to coach her to stop bringing up in public, it's embarrassing. I remember her saying around the time of the release of Tusk that if it didn't sell she'd be disappointed in "everyone". I guess that includes the 300 K of us that bought the fantastic IYD and the 4 million of us that bought the brilliant Tusk album. I love you Stevie, but please just drop the pouting and get back to the music.:sorry:

Totally agree since we all know some of Stevie's best songwriting remains unheard by the general public, but I think it's far too late in her career for it to have a lasting impact. There are songs in there as good or better than anything that has been officially released.

Do you guys remember the time in 2011 when Stevie said she didn't care if nobody bought IYD and that she just wanted to make the record for herself and her fans? Sounds ironic now…

I do understand why it can be hard for such a sucessful act not to sell nearly as many records as before in spite of still making great music. But as for lamenting her poor sales in foreign markets, she has only herself to blame. Had she consistently toured Europe in her heyday she certainly would have built a following there and knowing how loyal Europeans fans are, that would have made a huge difference in the long run.

I just hope her disappointments won't dissuade her from making another record again.

Wow are you kidding me...

she's right up there with P!NK Lady GaGa And Madonna

What else does she except. This is like when Elton John was disappointed with his sales. Her best record selling days are long gone sadly.

and i agree that the ridiculous waiting periods don't help either......time her outlook changed and she made music for herself.

Mick

What kills me is the record companies dont have the money to promote the new releases .Stevie did comment on that.

I just dont believe they dont have it and where did the money go.

The artists dont get it.

Why is everybody jumping down her throat? She's just being honest. Sure, she could pretend that IYD was a huge smash (it did chart in the Top 10 after all). However, she's just being matter of fact about her own sales performance and used herself as an example of how the music business is in the toilet. She never compared herself with the hot young artists of today, who, by the way, are not selling nearly as much as they would have ten years ago. Yes, it is rather disappointing that a new album by an artist who has purportedly sold 140 million albums worldwide can barely sell a few copies of a new release. Facts are facts, and it would have been rather bizarre for her to pretend that IYD was a big hit when it wasn't.

:shrug: I am sort of one of those people sitting around smoking dope and wondering what the next record I'm going to buy! The essential difference is that I'm not wondering - I know the records I want to buy.

Stevie needs to focus less on sales and more on her craft. She's not getting any younger, and among any new material she has written, she has plenty of older material laying around to work with. At this stage in her career, she should be doing what Lindsey is doing - adding to his legacy by being more prolific than ever. She could put out an album every several years, and not feel obligated to tour for two years to promote it; perhaps just a few key performances, and TV appearances.

Another thing -- I find it odd that her concept of promoting a new album is to tour under the name of the album, yet only perform a slim fraction of it in the show, then make TV appearances performing old songs, and promise a movie documentary that is delivered nearly two years after the album's release, and accessible in the most limiting way. Who are the marketing geniuses responsible for this? The timing and tactics were all wrong. Makes me think her managers have the skill level akin to that of Chris Nicks' graphic design ability.

Oh she can be honest (although seriously what did she expect) but when i read "a big act like MOI" i want to punch her.

Lol.....Really show's there IS a Stevieland. Well I guess with who she was at one time, ya can't blame her.

Mick

I guess you're right but she's also been through tough times, you'd think she would be a bit more modest now :).
(actually i always knew she wasn't modest but does she have to make it that obvious?)

Just for comparison's sake, does anyone know what Lindsey's recent solo albums have been selling? (SWS, GoS, Under the Skin, etc.)

300,000 worldwide sales really isn't a lot of sales.

EXACTLY!

She is not alone in lower album sales. NOBODY is shifting albums like they used to. "Rock a Little" and "The Otherside Of The Mirror" charted LOWER than IYD, but both sold more copies in their first 2 years on sale. For Stevie to have a top 10 album and top 10 singles at this stage in her career is fantastic, regardless of how many copies it sold.

The success of an album is not purely based on the number of copies sold. Albums don't sell like they used to, so the adjustment has to be taken into account. IYD recieved rave reviews from fans and critics and brought in a lot of new fans for Stevie with Dave doing a lot of net promotion, the documentary and the Q&A sessions.

Whether Stevie belives it or not, IYD was a MASSIVE success and she should be so proud of herself for it.

An artist does not create just to sell it, they create because they have something inside them that they want to share with others and express in a certain way. Why does Stevie feel that she needs to sell sell sell? It's not like she needs the money, she's already MINTED.

You have a point about consistently touring Europe. Back in the day I had some good contacts at the record company and they were dying for her to come over to promote BD, WH and RAL and do shows. But she cancelled every single time. By the time TOSOTM came around it was too late. Although the album did fairly well, her shows weren't sold out'. I remember attending the show in Holland in '89 and the arena was half full and half of the people that were there, came to see Richard Marx.

As for IYD selling only 300.000, I think she's right. For a big act like her it is nothing. I don't think she's being arrogant or cocky about it, she's just being honest. She's used to selling millions. But she has herself and her team to blame for that. She listened to people who said if she would do a record she wouldn't make a dime because of internet piracy. That may be true but (like someone else said) she used to say she made music for herself and didn't care if it wouldn't sell one copy. A ten year 'pause' between albums wasn't a smart move. And releasing the documentary 2 years after the fact wasn't smart either. If she would have released the doc a few weeks after the record she might have sold a lot more. I don't know anything about digital releases but was IYD for sale as a digital download? If not, it should have been. This is the digital era and you reach a lot more people through the internet in addition to releasing hard copies.

She should be proud of herself, it's a great record. I know I love it :)

I don't think Stevie made this record with "sell sell sell" in mind. She knows she doesn't need the money. I think she's using the 300.000 figure as a way to poll how popular she still is. Concerts may sell out but she knows just as well as we do there are a lot of people going to the show who are casual fans or come with a friend.

oh I think she definitely made it hoping to sell a lot. the commercial gods just weren't as favorable this time. She isn't Lindsey, never has been, and sales and success and magazine covers and top of the charts and all that matters to her. She can hide it a lot of the time, but our girl is VERY competitive and likes to win.

As for needing money, in terms of supporting just herself, yeah she's set. But she doesn't. she supports a LOT of people... who have made their entire careers working for her and being supported by her .... friends, family, assistants... she gives them nominal job titles or they do errands and things, but they are paid by her. and then they have kids, and she puts most of them through college. and her brother, and her singers, and so on. and let's not forget managers and publicists and lawyers and all who work for her all year managing her assets and the like whether she's putting out new product or not, and many of those people get a cut of what she makes. money coming in also pays for the new stage wardrobes etc which cost a fortune. she's got a ton of expenses and if she retired and lived off her royalties she'd be eating into her capital really fast.

does she make enough to live a very nice version of most of our lives? sure. but she doesn't live our lifestyle, for better or worse, and keeping that huge ship afloat takes beaucoup cash. :cool:

Just for the record I love IYD too. Her best work in years I think. It makes me sad that she's stuck in this mode of thinking. Cause she should be WAY proud. I certainly was proud of her when the album dropped.

Mick

Probably because she refers to herself as "a big act" which, sorry, she just isn't. Maybe in her mind... :laugh:

But seriously, she should never expect the sales numbers of today's big acts. Frankly, her album sold very well with over 120K copies in the US, and actually, more than 500K world wide (I just sourced this statistic a few days back in another thread). There are tens of thousands of albums released every year. Most don't sell more than 5-10 thousand copies. Her 500K is quite respectable, and very enviable.

I find her comments annoying more than anything, because she prefers to lay blame instead of looking at her own output. If you want to sell records, you've got to be in people faces, all the time. They can't ever forget about you. Stevie's gaps between releases are simply too much. TV shows are not enough. Concerts don't sell albums - but might if albums were actually sold at her shows. Videos in heavy rotation do. Radio play does. Stevie doesn't have those promo tools to fall back on. It's not her fault - it's the passing of time.

That said, Stevie just needs a better perspective, instead of comparing her success to her previous successes - she needs to think about now, and not then. I hope she's happy with the album, regardless of sales.

i think in your dreams did pretty good considering how long its been for releases from her but if you listen to the entire interview from the Toronto Q&A sessions you wont think she was being such a jerk about it, its actually pretty funny the way she says it. that quote was taken out of context, she did go on to say that you cant look at it that way anymore because records don't sell like that. then she says this it is a great thing because she sold those 300,000 records personally by herself by stomping all over the US and then stomping all over Australia on her own.

you can listen to it here:

But she is a big act. The fact that she participated in the best selling group studio album of all time is not to be taken lightly. The fact that her band can sell out 15,000-seat arenas means she's a "big act." No, she's no Taylor Swift or Beyonce in today's world, but if you use Stevie's own past accomplishments as a benchmark, she is a big act, and sales of IYD fell well short of that benchmark.

I don't think she said anything about being compared to today's big acts. She's comparing IYD to her past accomplishments. It's purely math: IYD sold about 1/20 what Bella Donna sold. That's not good any way you slice it.

What is this- the 1990s? :lol: Are videos on "rotation" anywhere? Does anybody really listen to the radio anymore? I agree that being in the public eye (premieres, social media, parties, paparazzi, etc.) is crucial for maintaining ones relevance in today's hyper-connected age, but that is tantamount to selling your soul. Quite simply, she's just not that kind of girl; she's not going to compromise her integrity/privacy just to get a few more hits on YouTube. Yes, ten years between studio albums is excessive, but she was still out there touring every year and offering retrospective packages of her work in the interim. And her continuous ubiquity on album rock and AAA format radio is unquestionable. It would be dishonest to say that suddenly she became a non-household name during those ten years.l

I honestly don't think she cares about the money. But she does care about sales because it is some kind of a metric on the quality of her album and the degree to which her fans did or did not embrace it. She wanted everyone to love it because she was so proud of it. Plus I'm sure there is a side of her that wishes she could go all in yer face to the naysayers who were telling her not to bother recording new music for the past ten years. Alas, the commercial reception of IYD only validated what they've been telling her; that has to sting.

To hear her say it, you would think she toured for two years continuously, when in fact she toured for one month in 2011 and one month in 2012 plus a handful of one-off shows here and there. And her touring has been mainly limited to the U.S. Northeast; she didn't really properly tour the west coast or Midwest. Yes, she (and Dave) pretty much peddled the record herself. But she shouldn't act like she visited every nook and cranny to do it.

Wikipedia says IYD sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. :shrug:

And, I don't think it's fair to be annoyed with her for referring to herself as a "big act". Guys, she's Stevie effing Nicks. Every time I would wear my Stevie tees to highschool, the teachers and students would be like "Oh my god, you saw Stevie?". She's kind of a rock goddess, people. And yes she's a few decades past her prime. But she's still a rockstar. Her band made the 8th best-selling record of all time. She's often referred to as the queen of rock & roll. That's really something. I know we're all like overly familiar with her and know so much about her that it's nothing out of the ordinary to make fun of her or joke about it. But to the rest of the world, at least the majority of it that is old enough or cultured enough to know this stuff, she is a pretty big deal.

And I think IYD would've sold better had it had better vocals. :sorry: But my mother and I are both die-hard Stevie fans. So are about 5 of my close friends. And not one of them plays IYD very much at all. The vocals are a little nails-on-a-chalkboard. I get that she's older and the voice is destroyed by all the **** she's ingested (Trust me, I get it. I used to be the lead in school musicals every year. Then I had my bout with blow and rehab and all that jazz, plus a pretty nasty smoking habit. And now I can't sing a note.), but at the same time every now and then she'll sing something so pure and stunning that it amazes me. You just have to learn to produce that voice and how to deal with her. I mean to me Love Changes stands out on TISL because her voice sounds a decade younger than all the other songs. And the guy who produced it also did Call On Me For Magic, where she hits the highest notes we've heard in years. That's not a coincidence. I think you just have to put a lot of effort into stretching her voice and getting a clean take. Ehh, ignore my rant. Maybe i'm crazy.

Re
 

If it was a great record it would have sold. C'mon now, it sounds like an 80's record with poor production with almost all of the songs hovering over 6 minutes. There's was no monster single and certainly no great follow up single. I would blame Dave Stewart but who knows? Glen Ballard did the same thing to IYD as he did to the last Annie Lennox record - he made it sound generic.

Stevie should take comfort in the fact that when her contemporary female rock singers (Pat Benatar, Linda Rondstadt, Belinda Carlisle…) release their albums, they are happy if they even reach the Billboard 200!

Sales = / = Quality.

I think when talking about IYD, Stevie's gonna get damned either way. If she said she was happy with how it did, as it was a moderate success, people would be like 'lol no, flopped' but now she's admitted she wishes it sold more, people are ragging on her for that. Woman can't win :shrug:

Amen! Stevie is a force of nature, by absolute perseverance & talent ta boot, It's not nothing that Stevie is well into her 5th decade of her storied adventure with fame & fortune. She is a big rock star! And debatably may have risen to the top of the mantle of the female rock throne! Stevie's music (Mac & solo) from 1975 - 1983 is STILL in constant rotation on numerous radio and satellite stations - probably moreso than any other female artist of her generation! Just because Stevie has never been the media whore like Madonna, LadyG, Beyonce etc., She is very much revered and has amassed the curiousilty of many new younger fans & continues to inspire todays recording Artists. That's not nothing. That's HUGE.:nod:
Also very few from her generation are still selling as much or more as Stevie sold with IYD! That list is not long (Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) Especially in the classic rock genre. She certainly sold thousands upon thousands more copies than Hearts last release.
Its also worth nothing that Stevie sold more copies than her younger female pop/rock compadres last releases; Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow & Sarah Mclachlan, Hole.

OK. So she's a big *oldies* act - a *nostalgia* act. Like The Stones or Heart or any other number of bands and performers who are essentially has-beens. Many of them still sell out arenas, but cannot sell albums. Many of them also have fans who are convinced that music "isn't good anymore" and they only like the songs they know, from the past; check out Stevie's setlist - she perpetuates this.

Yes, videos are on TV. I watch them every week on NewNowNext. I find dozens of great artists, newer and older, this way. If videos and radio didn't matter, they wouldn't be so critical to the success of new acts. Every day there's a story about so-and-so's video in the entertainment media. I would not consider her a household name today, and if I were her manager I'd make sure she knew that that type of recognition comes from constant effort. You can't rest on the laurels of your past if you want to continue being successful. This is true of any profession. 10 years between albums? She could have released FIVE albums in that time period. Even 6 years between albums is too many years.

I didn't mention money, but, obviously sales are important to her, or she would not mention them. Stevie equates sales *quantities* with success, but like I said, I believe it is because she is comparing herself today to herself yesterday. That needs to stop.



I love Stevie's music, and I don't want anyone to think I'm knocking her. I think IYD was one of her best albums, ever. I don't care how many albums she sells - it's not relevant to me as a fan. But reality is reality - name recognition, sales, radio, videos - these things matter - but all that aside, Stevie is not as big and popular *anymore* as she likes to think she still is. Being a legend doesn't mean you will sell a lot of albums. That's OK - I don't appreciate her any less than when she was selling millions.

Agree on all Points.

Mick

Hello folks,

I admire Stevie's honesty. She worked her ass off promoting this record. She was on the big shows and everything. Think of all the things she has done in the last three years and what she has went through. The work did pay off in a way. Fleetwood Mac's tour is doing really well. That is because her smart thinking has kept them in the limelight (getting them on Glee...). It's just her solo career is not known for quality. Lot of people were ready to embrace her but never liked TISL.

She will do an EP or 10 song album, probably released directly to iTunes.

I think it's just that some fans see things for how they really are, and other fans see from a more fantastical point of view. I'm a realist - I love Stevie, but if she expects to be a top-selling artist today, she's living in a fantasy world. It just isn't going to happen. But it doesn't need to happen, either.

She comes off (in print) like her low sales figures have nothing to do with her, and everything to do with fans, the internet and label execs. While those things have a lot of sway over her success, it ultimately comes down to her not having throughput with all of the projects she talks about.

There we go! She should be proud of the album and her efforts.

probably being on American Idol hurt her career a bit