Can Stevie break the trend?

[Jondalar]

Little Queen and Dreamboat Annie, great albums. My favorite song is Mistral Wind.

[sorcerer999]

Originally Posted by Jondalar

My favorite song is Mistral Wind.

Mine too! INCREDIBLE song!

[APerfectLie]

Originally Posted by Christopher

I not sure characterizing people as "so hung up" really is fair regarding our speculation on how IYD will do in this new music marketplace. It's been a long 10 years and there is nothing obsessive about us debating where Stevie will land in this new landscape. This is new territory not only at this stage in her career, but also because of her unusually long absence from recording new music! I'm sure the majority of us who visit this board want to see Stevie recognized and have another success.

That being said success is so subjective. For some it will only be achieved if she has a "gold" selling album, for others it will take having rave critical reviews & Grammy nominations, and for some it's all of the above. But past indicators are that Stevie has had a pretty spotless history marred occasionally by a bad song or production here and there - However Stevie has really only had one all out FLOP - both creatively (by her own admission) & commercially in Street Angel. I for one don't expect Stevie to burn up the charts anymore and having a hit single will be a fluke at this point. Stevie's iconic status alone will garner a lot of attention when this new record drops. But I suspect IYD will follow the same TISL trajectory...debuting somewhere in the Top 10 album charts followed by a fast decline after a month or two.

So I believe most of us just simply wish for Stevie to be celebrated and have a flawless album mostly. But also want it to be a positive enough experience for Stevie to feel rejuvenated and motivated to at the very least want to record one more great FM record.

**It is important to keep things in perspective though**. With statistics such as the highest selling album of 2000 being 9.9 million, and in 2010 a mere 3.4 million-that's an astonishing@60% decline in overall sales industry wide in the last 10 years. TISL had 1st week sales of over 109K, so to match that by todays measure Stevie would have to nab 1st week sales @4oK. So once you accept the music industry's new reality, if IYD sells over 200k by year end, that would really be acceptable & equivalent to TISL sales. Furthermore if Stevie breaks this trend of older artists and IYD is certified "gold", that would be considered a runaway success!

Agreed. I did some research and total album sales have been dropping by 8% a year over the past ten years. Therefore, Stevie should expect around a 57% decrease in sales from TISL. It only took a month to sell 500,000 copies of TISL, but then sales dropped off significantly after that, so if Stevie could score 217,195 within the first month or two, it would be on par with TISL sales wise. But if she only scores the 100,000 people keep predicting, it would be somewhat of a failure compared to TISL, at least sales wise.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by mikebise

LOL! I was just gonna ask about Heart's flop album!

ALL the caterwauling on here about how ignorant and stupid Stevie is in her lack of online savvy-ness reached a fevered pitch when Heart was preparing to release their "acclaimed" "comeback" album, and Heart were doing hip/Now!/With It! Internet tactics. All that viral activity, leaking album tracks early... I can't even remember all the lists of how much smarter Heart were being than Stevie the Stegosaurus while building the online BUZZ among today's YOUTH, who ONLY get their information and opinions from YouTube. Today's Youth would surely be virally enticed into worshipping Heart and immediately adding the band to their shrines to Katy Perry and GaGa. Heart had tackled the Internet Beast!!!

L-O-F-ing-L!!!!!!!!!

I'll type your Replies for you: "Well! At least Heart tried! Stevie doesn't do anything!!!"

I'm on multiple lists having to do with Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks and Heart and I never saw any of what you describe. It seems odd for people on a site like this to blast Nicks for not doing what Heart was doing, considering that she hasn't had a new album out for awhile.

That being said, Red Velvet Car was a top 10 album, which hardly makes it a "flop". If anything, the sales for RVC are really typical of the sales for nearly everyone these days: Music sales have tanked because so many people download stuff illegally. Given that Heart's been around for so long, it's pretty amazing that their album did hit the top 10. The album is acclaimed - and I'm not using quotes like you did because it WAS acclaimed, whether you personally like Heart or not - and that has little to do with album sales. An album can be really good and still not sell millions. It just depends on so many factors: trends, radio play, marketing, etc.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by APerfectLie

Agreed. I did some research and total album sales have been dropping by 8% a year over the past ten years. Therefore, Stevie should expect around a 57% decrease in sales from TISL. It only took a month to sell 500,000 copies of TISL, but then sales dropped off significantly after that, so if Stevie could score 217,195 within the first month or two, it would be on par with TISL sales wise. But if she only scores the 100,000 people keep predicting, it would be somewhat of a failure compared to TISL, at least sales wise.

I thought actually sells also included albums shipped out, not actually sold. I think that is really hurting people's numbers. They just don't ship as many albums out because of the internet.

[SapphireSister]

The more I think about it, the main thing that's going to ultimately matter in the music industry in terms of measuring album sales is download numbers. Of course illegal downloading /pirating of music will continue to be a factor and the same could be said for CD's in the past (but to a lesser extent) only now it's easier with computers and portable music devices. Remember burning CD's? I also expect their to be another crackdown sometime soon on illegal downloading and file sharing like there was years ago with Napster.

I really see CD's phasing out over the next few years and then becoming obsolete which has happened almost completely with records and cassette tapes (there are exceptions of course for collectors and DJ's, etc). Sure there will always be the people who will continue buying CD's but as the demand dramatically decreases (which it already has), so will production and before we know it they aren't going to be manufacturing them anymore because it won't be cost effective. My point is that computers and the digital age have completely changed the face of the music industry and the entire concept of album sales and Billboard charts measuring the monetary success of an album is clearly becoming a thing of the past. I'll go out on a limb here and even say in the near future there is going to be an entirely new rating system in terms of how to measure album sales.

In my opinion it could go either way for Stevie. In all likelihood her "album sales" will be based more on the traditional numbers since the core of her audience will still buy the CD. I would say chances are "new" fans will be downloading the singles and and buying the CD. So in other words if she gains a tremendous amount of new fans who download her singles it could potentially be a success but not just with us old-timers buying the CD. And if she does happen to top the traditional charts it will be short-lived.

[APerfectLie]

Originally Posted by SapphireSister

The more I think about it, the main thing that's going to ultimately matter in the music industry in terms of measuring album sales is download numbers. Of course illegal downloading /pirating of music will continue to be a factor and the same could be said for CD's in the past (but to a lesser extent) only now it's easier with computers and portable music devices. Remember burning CD's? I also expect their to be another crackdown sometime soon on illegal downloading and file sharing like there was years ago with Napster.

I really see CD's phasing out over the next few years and then becoming obsolete which has happened almost completely with records and cassette tapes (there are exceptions of course for collectors and DJ's, etc). Sure there will always be the people who will continue buying CD's but as the demand dramatically decreases (which it already has), so will production and before we know it they aren't going to be manufacturing them anymore because it won't be cost effective. My point is that computers and the digital age have completely changed the face of the music industry and the entire concept of album sales and Billboard charts measuring the monetary success of an album is clearly becoming a thing of the past. I'll go out on a limb here and even say in the near future there is going to be an entirely new rating system in terms of how to measure album sales.

In my opinion it could go either way for Stevie. In all likelihood her "album sales" will be based more on the traditional numbers since the core of her audience will still buy the CD. I would say chances are "new" fans will be downloading the singles and and buying the CD. So in other words if she gains a tremendous amount of new fans who download her singles it could potentially be a success but not just with us old-timers buying the CD. And if she does happen to top the traditional charts it will be short-lived.

Limewire was the largest illegal file sharing program out there recently. This days Napster and back in October there was a pretty big court case in which they lost and they were ordered to shut down "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality".