So, was it worth all the windowing?
In its first week on sale, deadmau5’s highly-anticipated >album title goes here< scored a rather mediocre 57,604 units in the US, according to Nielsen Soundscan stats shared with Digital Music News. The album remains unavailable on the US version of Spotify, and was comprehensively scrubbed from Grooveshark shortly after release. Other outlets, in particular iTunes, were given semi-exclusive priority.
The result was just a fraction of what Mumford & Sons sold during the same period. Mumford’s Babel scored nearly 600,000 units, a robust result even in healthier times. But meager album sales aren’t surprising for an electronic dance music (EDM) artist (or, progressive house, dubstep or whatever). Swedish House Mafia, for example, is selling out arenas on its upcoming farewell tour across major American cities. But the poppier SHM has sold just 60,000 albums – in aggregate – a figure that speaks volumes on what this audience cares about.
But wait: that doesn’t necessarily mean that the deadmau5 fans that are interested in the full album should get it for free. And, it’s entirely possibly that deadmau5 shrewdly maximized his first-week earnings by pushing traffic to iTunes. Indeed, of the fans that did purchase this album, nearly 41,000 bought it on iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, or another download outlet, according to the dataset. That’s nearly 71 percent of all purchases, each of which represents a massive revenue multiple over anything Spotify can offer.
Back at the Mumford & Sons camp, it turns out that Babel was available on Spotify and was played a record number of times during its first week. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mumford wouldn’t have done even better – and made a lot more money – if they’d pulled a deadmau5.
It might have done a little bit better had it not been available on Spotify. But I think this helps prove that even if Spotify is capable of cannibalizing sales, at this time the impact is insignificant.
8 million Mumford streams in week in a country with just 3 million Spotify users…. Makes me wonder how many streams the remaining 12 million non U.S. users have generated? Is 32 million a safe guess? So are we talling 40 million streams in a week?
That is good for a $ 200,000 payout. I guess Mumford and Sons can afford health insurance now.
Yes, finally someone properly using sarcasm.
Mumford is from the UK. Free healthcare over there. Land of the Free 😉
Damn another sarcasm fail
Nowadays weekly sales of 58,000 are a very respectable level. Albums have reached number 1 on Billboard with less. (I think 40,000 is the lowest so far.) It is the 600,000 sales by the Mumfords which is really freakish.
A superstar in another genre would pull at least a few hundred thousand album units in their first week. EDM — not much of an album genre — so why do this?
This has got to be the dumbest non-article ever. And comparing Deadmau5 and Mumford? C’mon. I get you’re trying to have a ‘windowing’ discussion but at least compare similar artists – there are so many other factors separating these artists that trying to draw parallels based on just windowing the albums is totally pointless. Also 57k for an EDM artist 1st week is huge. His last full length in 2010 did 26k first week. Doubling your debut sales week from your prior album two years ago? I count that as a win.
I think the article does say exactly what you are saying
I have to agree. 57k is a great number. I would be happy with it. Far better than Columbia’s attempt to maximize Kreayshawn and only doing 3,900 (digital only in fairness).
and yes, the comparison is difficult because Mumford have radio and moms – way more record buyers.
Spotify correlation I don’t see. But I do think it hurts you being a new artist and not being available in Spotify.
I’ve listened to this band/album. They blow.
Next!
I thought I was the only one and I began to think I was trapped in a dream. Mumford & Sons smells of old label garbage bullshit to me. Meaning, there is some form of trickery going on there. The sounds and the mixes are mediocre at best and there is just no way 600,000 sheep would purchase that album in this economy. I don’t believe it and it isn’t even logical.
That’s all I will say about that and I won’t even come back to check the comments on this post. We are all entitled to our opinions here in America, and that’s mine.
Are you saying the music industry just might inflate number of units sold to grab headlines?
In the old days they would say an album “goes platinum in the first week!” it was units shipped and those albums, then later CDs would sit on the shelf never to be sold.
Are they still playing this stupid game?
I personally know one label in particular that has done so. Bought up 100’s of thousands of their own singles on itunes and other platforms. In the end, they are only fooling themselves, not their profit margins.
Mumford is spammed on pretty much every radio station across the country. The difference between 1,000,000 sales and 100 sales is radio play.
It might have something to do with DeadMau5 endorsing free distribtuion of his content on P2P and his own channels.