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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
an indie/punk band selling 100,000 units of an album was like the motherload. Nowadays mainstream acts can't sell that in a month
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It's because the Internet d00d.
Though to be fair, some folks are still going strong on actual sales ("actual" in this case usually meaning any digital medium other than streaming, and physical sales). Obviously Beyoncé killed it, with something like 760,000 in her first week. And dildo Drake somehow did 1.6 million in a week. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Kanye sold 100,000 when he finally put his record out, and yeah, 50% of that came from streaming/sales conversions, but the fact that the album had already been streamed 150 million times and illegally downloaded God knows how many more, it's kind of a wonder he even charted with a two month old album, let alone hit #1.
No, they're not the sales figures he saw on Graduation (980,000/week), and no, this isn't 2000, when the 1 million mark was being hit by everyone from pop to hip-hop to rap-metal. But the industry's not entirely dead. It's just "evolving."
I wish it would evolve in some other way that less us old boys have some fun too. But face it man, Apple and Spotify are the music industry now. Chance the fucking Rapper had a top ten album with a "free" mixtape. Streaming-only albums are now eligible for Grammys, which is certainly not going to save the physical copy industry. That's just how things are going. Sad af.