For the last two weeks, Morten Harket, lead singer of a-Ha holds down the number one slot with his current solo project (while a-Ha record a new one) "Letters From Egypt", pulling about 5-6,000 so far. Now that number may seem like a joke to get to number one with but as Prince said DO THE MATH.

6,000 copies sold, Norway's Population 4.5 million
typical USA number one 150,000 sold USA Population 300,000,000 as of 2006.

When you do the math the Norway total is a bigger % of people. This is not even taking into account the cost of cds which is much greater there than here, or the artists payday, which is much more there than here too. So i know the running joke has always been, yeah your number one...but in Germany, well, we see both have a powerful value.
[Edited 6/7/08 7:32am]

no, because noone cares. Norway doesn't make stars. you don't make money from 6000 sold records.
it's okay though.

graecophilos said:

Really tell it to his bank account. An american artist makes zero off their product. Morten and a-Ha have sold 85 million worldwide, and yet only a million of that is on the shores of the USA, so where's the weight that the USA has? The USA has lost what it had, our numbers are no more relevant to them as theirs to ours. Except now you can survive with other regions and nothing in the USA, i mean KYLIE and Girls Aloud have proved that.

And like im saying, the point is, what are you doing in the masses of the country. Somewhere like Norway has one chart and probably a few radio stations, so its a fight to get on. So in the USA you are selling 100,000 in a country of 300 million consumers? Thats not much of a "hold" on a market.
[Edited 6/7/08 8:42am]

lastdecember said:

Are U saying 100.000 copies is less relevant than 6000? You're kidding , right?
Point is the USA is still the #1 nation in recording music and is certainly not threatened by tiny Norway.
On the other hand, I doubt A-Ha have sold 1 million record in America and 79 million in the rest of the world. I guess they never sold more than 20 million records worldwide.

What exactly is the reason behind all this US bashing you do? Your thread title is ludicrous unless you're talking about the sentimental value to a specific artist. Otherwise, NO ONE would choose a Number One in Norway over a Number One in the US. Absolutely no one. Least of all Morten Harket.

lastdecember said:

This of course depends on what kind of contract Morten has with the Norwegian record company... is it a distribution deal like those Prince has done in the past years or is it a traditional record deal where he gets a % or some amount of kroner per each record sold? Yes, CDs in Norway are very expensive (about 30 US$ for a single CD according to some websites I checked), even compared to CD prices in tiny Iceland (regular price here is 25$ for one CD). However, the sales tax on CDs in Norway is also ridiculously high (25%) which means that of the 30US$ retail price, 6 dollars go to the taxman. The retailer will probably be putting at least 40% on top of the price they get the CDs from the record company, which leaves (if we're generous) 16 or 17 dollars to cover production costs and some of it of course goes into the pockets of Morten Harket and the record company. True, this may be more than what an American artist gets per CD (depending on the contract) BUT the cost of living in Norway is also much higher. The gas price is about 10 dollars per gallon over there!

So while Morten Harket might be getting more money per CD in Norway that doesn't say much. Let me take one example of Iceland's biggest selling artist of all time, Bubbi Morthens. He typically sells 5000-10000 CDs of each album, sometimes up to 20000. He has sold around 200.000 records for the last 25 years in a country of 300.000 people. Yes, he makes alot of money but is he making alot of money from CD sales? Probably not, because just touring and selling CDs isn't enough for him to maintain his expensive lifestyle. He does TV advertisements for Range Rover and N1 (local petrol company), judges in reality TV contests (Idol and his own reality show, sort of a "Rockstar INXS" clone) and does corporate gigs for political parties and wealthy people. YOU do the math.

I see your point because Canada is like that too with copies sold versus total population.

speeddemon said:

My friend thw world is a BIG place, 80 million sold is a combo of singles and albums in every market, they have a huge following obviously in their home of Norway, but also in Germanyand the UK which is on par which america in terms of "star" status that you speak of, as is Japan and china which have bigger markets., and dont leave out LATIN AMERICA, people tend to forget that this even exists, ask MIKE on this forum about how big a-Ha is in places like argentina, chile and others, their like fucking royality. So walk into one of those markets with someone like Rick Ross and say "hey i sold 100,000" he is irrelevant to the rest of the world.

midnightmover said:

I would take a popularity like QUEEN or a-Ha or KYLIE over the success of say Rick Ross and J Holiday who may sell 100-200,000 records but they are meaningless in the big picture. Take a step back and just realize there is a world of music not just what goes on in these boring ass borders.

Norway!

I like the few Norwegian artists I know a lot!

My friend, you obviously don't know what you're talking about.

The US market might have abruptly decreased in the past 7-8 years on album sales but still remains the #1 market in the world with a 35-37 % market share.

That means that when Rick Ross or Lil Wayne tops the Billboard 200 with 300.000 units, even without the support of other markets, the figure is still stronger than any other album release in the rest of the world generally, except if an album in UK or Japan does a better figure which is unusual.

Add the fact that those artists now sells a lot of digital downloads and ringmasters.
For example, Flo Rida's Low is close to cross the 4 million mark in the US in digital downloads and over 2 million ringmasters, that's 6 million music means.
By comparison, it would take decades for A-HA to sell that many music units in the rest of the world.

If A-HA have sold 80 million records worldwide, you have to prove it cause it seems totally ludicrous to reach that type of figures without the support of the US market.
They'd have to sell 20 million records in UK, another 10 million in Japan, another 10 million in France or Germany. If they achieved these sales in these respective nations, then, they are among the biggest selling acts ever there, on par with the Beatles , MJ, Madonna and others. However, we know they aren't.

A-HA never sold 80 mio records. This is the league of George Michael and Earth, Wind And Fire.

A-Ha are only remebered for one single song.

graecophilos said:

And this thread reminds me how much I hate that song

graecophilos said:

Wow u really need to open your mind and ears to the rest of the world. U remember them for one song and the USA may remeber them for one song, but search their stats on the net and ANY related chart book for the WORLD charts not just the usa charts, and see how many songs they have had. And if people would do research they would be SMART enough to realize "take on me" isnt even their biggest worldwide hit.

speeddemon said:

Well do your own search and see the numbers. a-Ha may have had ONE hit here, though they did have 2, but anyway, they had 13 straight Top 20's in the UK from 1985-1988, during which they clearly sold a combination of 30 million records and singles, just in the UK which was their strongest market. As they slowly fell in popularity in the UK as the 90's began there popularity grew in the south america, in which their concert in RIO in 1991 is still the most attended concert of ALL TIME, paying event that is, not free gatherings, and yes they beat MJ and McCartney to acheive this (SEARCH IT, its well proven), the concert was attended by 191,000. Upon their return in 2000 to releasing albums after a 6 year break, they got their UK status back and new status in Germany, where they topped the charts with singles and albums, once again South America, and of course Japan which was their strong hold in the 80's also. Theyve had 9 albums, 2 hits packages, 1 double live cd, all of which acheived platnum and gold status in all these countries according to their levels, and of course still having hit singles, most recent in the UK was their TOP 10 hit "analogue", so the combo of all that has given them 80 million sold, which is not a crazy number when you have had that level of success in all these markets with 9 albums and 25+ singles more than half of them being chart toppers in countries.

And lets not forget Queen is an act that sold well over 100million, Bon Jovi has sold close to 125,000million etc... so 300,000 records is cool, but if arent around long or cant go in every market its not relevant when all is said and done.

Ok, You don't know what you're talking about! You're presuming A-HA sold 30 million records in the UK alone on the back of only 13 top 20 hits. I'll give u an example to show how ludicrous your assertion is. Elvis Presley has officially sold more than 19 million singles in the UK. He did it with over 70 Top 10 singles and over 120 charting singles. Add 18 million albums out of 112 charted albums, including 10 #1s: total: 37 million total records sold in the UK.
Now, how A-HA could have sold 30 million records in the UK without achieving 1/100 of those achievements. They would need to achieve back to back all time best sellers and as far as I know, they don't have any million sellers in the UK. A group like Boney M have 2 of the 10 best selling singles ever in the UK and they've only reached 6 million singles .



Queen and Bon Jovi have achieved tremendous success in the US. Both Greatest hits albums are still selling over 6000 copies per week in America and Bohemian Rhapsody and Livin On A Prayer do 9000-10.000 digital downloads per week respectively.
There is no comparison!