THE SALES OF LINKIN PARK (and other Band)

This! Also, popularity changes overtime and that doesn't mean every band you know and love from the last ten or twenty years went downhill completely. Some bands continue to survive longer than others and LP is one of them, in fact looking at the Billboard 200 charts on this week and the last two, Hybrid Theory is also on it and if you add that with the THP sales, that actually makes things up for the band a bit and also earned some new fans here and there.

 

Really puts it in perspective. Album sales are declining. That's really all there is to it though I could have seen THP selling more had it been better promoted.

 

What would really boost the sales would be some award nominations. If LP gets a grammy nomination for even the smallest thing related to THP, it would be a big boost to the sales. That and they need a solid single with top notch promotion that reaches at least the top 30 to top 40. LP's biggest hindrance this time around was the lack of huge singles. While I personally feel GATS is their best lead single ever and one of their greatest songs, the song is extremely non-mainstream and isn't radio-friendly in the slightest with the heavy riffs and drums and Chester's raw vocal performance(Unlike other LP singles which always featured Chester in a very melodic pop voice).

Lead singles aren't the only songs that can create an impact but they have the biggest chance. The Catalyst peaked at a much higher chart position than Waiting For The End but WFTE still sold more. If WFTE was released as the first single, it would have probably debuted in the top 20 for sure. Burn it Down might have sold 1 million but LT still didn't touch 700k because the album in general was not well received(another reason for the decline in this album's sales). If BID was the 2nd single, it would probably not have sold more than 500k. The debut single always has the biggest chance to chart best.

Until It's Gone was a poor choice for a single. It's very cliche and repetitive in it's approach and style that it would hardly create any impact. However, I will agree that it fits so well with the Transformers game trailer. They really should have used it for the movie. The Imagine Dragons song was disappointing. That said, Final Masquerade would have been a better 2nd single. Or better yet, Rebellion would have been better. The fact that it debuted at number 1 in itunes in over 20 countries including the US was proof of the buzz riding behind the collaboration.

THP might be a slow seller. The decline is a bit disappointing but it's how things are now. Coldplay's sales also have gone down. The difference between LP and Coldplay is that the majority of their fanbase aren't picky like LP fans (nu metal/ non-nu metal/ ATS style) so hence the decline will be a much slower but gradual one. I'm hoping LP gets some nominations. It would help so much.

 

Honestly, Coldplay fans always came off to me as pretty picky as well. There's more or less two eras of Coldplay -- pre Viva La Vida and post. The post is a far more experimental, electronic Coldplay that relies a lot less on guitars and real instermentation in general.

And IMO the single choices for LT were really bad. Burn it Down was an okay first single, though it's one of the only LP songs I don't like. But I'll Be Gone just SCREAMS single (also I love that song), and I think that one of the other slow songs on the album besides COG would have been a better single choice. Also I know it was only a promo but LGM was a weird pick. I probably would have gone:

BID (again, not my favorite, but it did well)
IBG
Powerless or Roads Untraveled (it's a crapshoot between these two, both great songs that are very radio friendly)
Maybe Lost in the Echo? Maybe the other aforementioned slow song? I dunno I have heard about half of LT...

 

A bit late to reply to the responses of this not being the flop. I just did some googling around and when a band like the Avenged Sevenfold, which is significantly smaller than Linkin Park, could get 200 000 sales in the first week in the US and take the number one spot in the US and UK charts with Hail to the King (which was released last year, so any drop off in music album buying trend shouldn't be significant) you know the album definitely flopped. I mean flopped for an LP album. It is the first album not to make a no. 1 since HT. I mean that's huge news. And like I said you can't claim they did "herbivore" music because they've done that with ATS and it did well (comperatively to other music released at the time) and Avenged Sevenfold certainly does not have radio friendly music. In fact you could say they've been carnivores they've all carrier.

Also there's absolutely no chance for the album to be nominated for the Grammys. There's nothing special about the music that would demand it.

Lastly, no chance of THP having legs like ATS, MTM and LT (though I'm not too sure of LT's legs either). Two singles are out already and they did nothing for the album. The next single is arguably one of the best songs LP has written but it is in stark contrast to the album's style which will prohibit the album from being bought by people who like FM. The only chance to have any sort of legs would be if the final single is Rebellion really.

 

Last week, THP sold a bit over 11,000 copies in the states and the total is 166,374.

 

Fraid not, LP has been on a very slow downhill tread since 2010. Both ATS and LY got a #1 by incredibly slim margins, they were by no means easy gets. A number one is still a number one, yeah, you you seem to be painting it as they were right on top and then all of a sudden dropped. They didn't, they've slowly been selling less and less over time, if anything that Living Things hit number one was bigger and more surprisng news, that an album a band came out with over a decade after their commercial peak isn't

The herbivore/carnivore crap could actually be a case in favor of the style change and subsequent drop; they knew it wouldn't be as success and did it anyway.

I don't think anyone's seriously expecting it to be.

Except for sell a hundred and seventy something copies.

What was the biggest hit from Hybrid Theory again? A Place for My Head? No no, Papercut.

Oh right, it was In The End; a poppy if mopey ballad that didn't sound terribly out of place on the radio with Creed and The Calling. A pop ballad sure as shit moved a lot of copies in 2001, but it won't in 2014?

I'll say it again; the album did fine. And not only that, I think it can continue to do fine.

 

The album did fine? You are kidding right?
Funny how some people try to convince themselves and others that the album did fine just because they like it, or were crazy for some heavy stuff to come.

The album debuted horribly, it keeps falling, and unfortunately I don't think it can get better in the future.

 

Looking at the decline in sales, I'd have to say in THP case, it has purely come down to the raw, aggressive music not being as popular as it used to be.

Here in Australia, just flick on the top 40 count down of any given radio station or tv music channel and 99% of the time you will not get a single rock song these days. A Coldplay song maybe, but their style is far removed from what THP is. The mainstream listeners have gentle ears and dancing feet I'm afraid. Sad really.

The only way sales could have sharply increased was if UIG had been the Transformers 4 song, which would have carried it some way.

 

Album sales? Who gives a whit about the quantity of records sold? Except those who rightly view it as a bellwether of Linkin Park continuing to find success and ergo produce more music? The cretins! Music is music. I bought the album, and that's all that matters, as the universe does not exist beyond my own perception of it. Still, we should use our funds wisely and render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and if the apes rise, I say so be it. Linkin Park forever, or at least for a while. Remember, before we accept The Hunting Party as a sales failure, we must first accept the implicit failure in all mankind. There is a better path, and we must hunt for it, as one party. Because you don't know what you go oh you don't know what you got no you don't know what you got until you do.

 

How did it not? I'm really asking. Everything that doesn't go gold in a month is a spectacular failure?

It's like half of you people think an album needs to go gold in a month or else it's a complete and total bomb. Funny how some people try to convince themselves they know anything about the music industry and are screaming that selling 166,000 in 3 weeks is a crisis situation.

"Debuted horrible", enough with this shit.

 

It's Linkin Park, one of the biggest band in the world, not some average band out there.

Some people, including me, say it was a bad debut, not a bomb or a crisis, don't dramatize

 

That have been selling less and less with every subsequent album.

What would have been a "good" debut?

 

LT sold a little less than ATS. THP sold little less than the half of what those albums sold. That's debatable.

200k copies in the US like ATS or LT would have been cool.
Or at least, the 120k that it sold in its first week, followed by 100k in its second week would have been good to. But it didn't happen, it fell to much.

 

So in order to be good, it would have had to sell more than 80% of what it did it's debut week. Who sells albums that keep up an 80+ percent second week that isn't named Eminem or Adele?

 

Ugh dude. Then let's say 80k? 60? 40? Anything it's better than 27k copies in a second week.

It's clear we have different point of views, but I'm not going to justify the unjustifiable. The sales are not good.

You have your opinion, I got mine.

 

I physically get sick at threads like this, the people who make them, and the people who feel it is important to discuss one way or the other. LP put out music before they had a label and in case Warner kicks them to the curb, which they won't, they'll put music out again still, with or without a label.

Discussing sales takes away from what your purpose as a fan is to be, which is to critique the music and not the business behind it. LP still did awesome stuff with THP, stuff that LP hasn't done, even if others have. If you can't sleep at night without discussing sales, blame the consumers and not the artist, because those that bothered to listen to THP are in agreement that it's great, the majority anyway. Blame the Biebers and One Directioners and Kesha-ers and so on for people wanting easy-on-the-ears-and-catchy-as-fuck jingles produced on a computer instead of people playing actual instruments.

 

Those that say that the album did fine usually propose 2 excuses: the natural decline of album sales and the fact that this is a rock and heavy album.

1) Natural Decline- You could argue that the album sales are going down across the board. This is certainly the case. In fact we've seen that sort of a decline with LP albums. The last two, for example, had this sort of a decline with LT selling around 20 000 units less than ATS on debut. But that's the thing- it only sold a little less. Given the same amount of time (roughly) between LT and THP as with ATS and LT a similar decline should have been expected. But instead we got an album that dropped almost 50% in sales. That is alarming. In fact if this was a result of a general trend in music LP would have still debuted at number 1 with such a number. But instead this was the first time they didn't debut as high.

2) Rock music doesn't sell. This point is a nice alibi but honestly just like with everything GOOD rock music does sell. Bad rock music doesn't. Good pop sells. Bad pop doesn't. I gave the example already but last year Avenged Sevenfold released Hail to the King. Now AS are arguably heavier than LP ever were nor will be, some even classify them as metal not simply rock. And yet HTHK sold 200 000 copies in its first week and was critically applauded. That's the sort of numbers you'd expect LP pushing. So in no way can you say that aggressive rock doesn't sel..

3) Marketing was weak. This is a bonus point. Many people argue that WB's marketing for LP is weak and thus their music and sales performance suffers. I'm not sure how you can expect WB would drop the ball on one of their biggest acts but ok. The marketing for this album was probably the best when it comes to reaching the wider audience. First off GATS got released to show off the new album's direction and then UIG was meant to be a radio friendly single to get the general audience interested. I mean yes, WB could have chosen FM which is superior to UIG but that's the only mistake they made. Blaming the non-radio friendly GATS for the poor debut also cannot be done since ATS did just fine with The Catalyst as the first single and let's be honest The Catalyst is a lot less radio-friendly than GATS.

All in all this album was a flop and should send alarm bells to both Warner and LP as to what kind of music do their fans want to hear. Now I'm not saying that should be dictated by the sales numbers but obviously something went wrong with THP and they need to sit down and think about what it was.

 

The drop between M2M and ATS was also over 50% (625,000 for M2M to 241,000 for ATS), so wouldn't that have been "alarming"? Despite having that drop, ATS was still a successful album, as is THP. The factors that affected the drop in the case of ATS are actually the same as THP; decreasing album sales across the board and the fact that these albums aren't meant to be very commercially successful - the band has stated that they knew both ATS and THP would have a hard time selling since they lack commercial appeal. As for LT, that was a very commercially appealing mainstream album. Therefore, the drop between ATS and LT wasn't as great.

Additionally, ATS and LT were barely #1 albums and having a #3 album isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. Hesitation Marks by Nine Inch Nails also debuted at #3 last year - and it actually sold less than THP. The last Muse album sold 100k (also less than THP) and debuted at #2 in 2012. Chart positions basically just depend on what albums you're going up against in that week, and selling 100k-150k is pretty much the norm for big acts nowadays, so I'd say LP is still going very strong for an act that's been around for a decade and a half now.

Firstly, Hail to the King 159,000 in the US - which is only marginally higher than what LP sold with THP. As for the whole good music sells vs bad music doesn't - then explain the likes of Bieber, Iggy Azalea, David Guetta, Nickelback and so on. Additionally, I wouldn't say Hail to the King was "critically applauded." It got similar reviews to THP, so insinuating one album as "good" music and the other as "bad" makes no sense at all. On top of that, I'd say THP was the riskier album to make since it's another dramatic shift in style for LP, in comparison to their previous works.

Is The Catalyst really less radio-friendly when it actually performed better than GATS? Just like ATS, the band knew it would be an uphill battle to get THP to sell and to have it played on the radio, but that didn't stop them from making it.

I'd say the album was a success, especially since it isn't nearly as commercially appealing as Living Things. But honestly, LP shouldn't give a fuck about album sales - as long as they're able to make a living off of them, which I'm sure they will no matter what they put out. And by making THP, it's actually nice to see that they really don't, so I don't know why fans care so much.