GARTH #1?: There is more than a little skepticism in the industry surrounding the Wal-mart report on sales for the Garth Brooks box set that the mass merchant behemoth put on sale the day after Thanksgiving. With Wal-mart shipping it themselves from their own warehouses, and no electronic tracking being reported to any outside entities, there is just no way to verify the astronomical numbers—namely 500k in the first day—being fed to the press. Although sources close to Lyric Street and Hollywood Records, who are working radio only on the project, say they tend to believe the reports, many others are wary. Would Garth have debuted #1 last week if sales had been reported? Your guess is as good as ours.
[Edited 12/2/05 15:31pm]
[Edited 12/2/05 18:45pm]

It's a 6 cd set for $25 bucks so I would say that the 500k is probably accurate.

More artists should follow his lead and release all their cd's at the same time with an added song or two for a really low price.

That could be 500k discs or something, so divide it by 6??

garth is the cliff richard of america. (cliff being huge in UK with grannies) Every country has 1 artist who is huge in their native homeland and do shit all anywhere else. Well they proberly do.

Ellie said:

I belive 500k times 6 discs in one single day

I am curious how much it did in a whole week!!

But when they do the RIAA certifications they multiply times the numer of discs
but each disc has to meet a certain minimum # of mins

If prince did the same it would be so many discs

Albums sold exclusively at selective retail and not sold in others usually do not reflect in Soundscan/Billboard. So Garth could have sold that amount, but it will not chart.

Alanis Morissette's 'Jagged Little Pill Accoustic' never charted when it was only sold at Starbucks for the fist six weeks (and it was reported that she averaged about 20K-30K each of those weeks. It did chart after it was released everywhere. Same must go for all the exclusive cd's sold at Starbucks and other specialty places

peace

VANITYSprisonBYTCH said:

morsettes album was sold b4 the official release date!!

soundscan policy doesnt allow for counting of such copies!!

The same thing with musicology all copies b4 the official release werent counted!! That was as high as 400k just from concerts and lets not forget those from npgmc!!

Garth was different!! only walmart didnt report the results to soundscan
if they had reported they would be counted!!
[Edited 12/2/05 17:00pm]

asg said:

They aren't trying to claim that 500K box sets where sold in a day? If so, I'm scared! That figure is highly suspicous. Keep in mind, we are talking about WalMart here.

asg said:

Um, how is Garth different? As stated before, yes, Alanis CD was sold before it was offically released but it didn't chart until all stores could sell it!

Maybe they mean 500k ordered to be shipped to Walmart.

Ellie said:

no he sold 500k in one single day!! he is very capable to do it
I remeber the 90s he was always selling out!!!

VinnyM27 said:

thats his offical release date!!! he can sell anywhere he wants

hungup is only selling on itunes not other downloaders!

SST sales thru npgmc werent reported to soundscan therefore they werent counted

asg said:

Actually, you can buy the maxi single in stores. Who's to say that when Alanis released here album thrugh Starbucks that it wasn't the offical release date.

asg said:

Oh well, I still can't name any of his songs. I can picture him in my head wearing a silly shirt but nope, a blank on the songs.

Ellie said:

I can only remember his numbers! i dont know any of his songs

but he has the highest royalties in music industry $5/cd

I think its very possible.. they priced a box set of six disks for $25 dollars...


damn.. Thats a good deal, if u dig him..

asg said:

I'm sorry but it is the policy of Billboard/SoundScan not to count speciality albums or collections sold through a single vendor. This is how it is for not only places like Starbucks but also Hallmark stores (where the recent Olivia Newton-John album "Stronger Than Before" was exclusively released and therefore not eligible for charting).

Wal-Mart turns in their sales totals to soundscan and billboard. so apparently they either didn't really sell 500k individual sets or it's not coutnted because it's only being sold through wal-mart

Some quotes from the LA Times article:


Wal-Mart, which is the exclusive retailer of the five-CD, one-DVD set, reported Wednesday that it sold more than 500,000 copies at $25 each as of the first day the set went on sale last Friday.

Because the album is being sold by only one retailer, it does not qualify for Billboard's top 200 albums chart, and its SoundScan sales numbers are not being released by Wal-Mart.

That is the prerogative of SoundScan clients, said Geoff Mayfield, charts editor at Billboard, which bases its album chart on SoundScan sales figures.

"We have no way of knowing" what it sold, Mayfield said. But even without seeing actual sales figures, Mayfield doesn't doubt that the set is a hot commodity.

Those numbers also include nearly two weeks of presale orders placed with Wal-Mart's website after the project was announced. Wal-Mart's statement said it took only three days for the set to become "the top-selling music item in the company's history."

"Don't get me wrong," Mayfield said of Billboard's policy against listing records sold by a single retailer on the chart. "When we first came up with the rule, there was no anticipation that someone with this kind of sales power would lock into an exclusive deal like that."


It seems a rather bizarre rule that has nothing to do with measuring product popularity. Just another way the whole Billboard charting system is inward focused on the industry and adjusted to whatever the majors find advantageous at a given point in time.

Eileen

Who cares about chart success and numbers??? You guys are trippin.

Do you actually think Garth gives a s#@t where it ranks?

He is sitting at home with his wife and girls saying,
Give me the $$$$$!

Chart rankings are for people without a career.

i saw one yesterday at walmart--- i don't even like garth brooks and i was tempted to buy one--it comes in a long black box that weighs like 5 pounds. if dumbshits like ashley simpson and carrie underwood can sell 300k in a week, why is it so hard to believe that GB couldn't do 500k in one day, with the kicker being a new cd of unreleased material? if Prince had the moxie to partner up with some huge chain and release 2 previously released cd's, a live concert dvd and a unreleased cd all at once for $25, hell he might see some high numbers like that (just not that high). he could have done it with the ONA boxset (threw in concert DVD)...he owns the music so he could have set the price