DROE sales/charts

[one man]

As we all know, Formation debuted at No. 59 on the Billboard 200, selling 11,900 copies in its first week. We had a long thread about that one (with no new data on the sales, unfortunately). A new one's due for Dark Roots.

Let's post any information about the figures, chart positions, gold records etc. here .

But first let's try to predict how well it will do. I'm guessing 24,000 copies and No. 22 on Billboard. I know this might be a little too optimistic/overestimated, but the promotion is even better these days than it was in 2008 (no MTV this time, however, but I don't know if that even helped given what that station had turned into), there seems to be a lot of preorders (which count as first week sales, I believe), the media coverage is more than decent, there's huge hype about the album in the Internet (the singles are being praised by almost everybody who heard them, except for metal-archives, but it's always been "trendy" to criticize Testament there). And hopefully there will be no problem with distribution this time (the stores ran out of the copies during Formation's first week).

Of course, I'd love the album to enter Bilboard's top 10, but that still seems unreal even in spite of the dropping sales of pop/rap/dance albums. Perhaps with the next one.

Anyway, feel invited to post your guesses/hopes here.

 

[jamesr7790]

Who cares, I'm just enjoying the album.

 

[redfly]

I'm going to put it around 30 k and hope for a million!

 

[Angelic Slayer]

I do care about album sales, because in this day and age, where the music industry has been ravaged by illegal downloading (and far fewer album sales as a consequence), it's really important that bands are able to keep themselves afloat by selling enough albums so that record companies will invest in them, and give them the money to be able to tour.

 

[Pascal]

Very hard to predict first week sales in the USA but there is no doubt on my mind that DROE will exceed Formation of Damnation. I would say Marketing for the new album has been completely at another level when compared to Formation so that is a very good sign.

Anthrax's Worship Music debuted at #12 on the Billboard 200 chart selling 28,500 copies. So I'd say 20,000 units for DROE is certainly attainable. It really all depends how many people get off their ass in the 1st week and make an effort to go buy the album. I'm without a doubt a 1st day buyer.

HELLYEAH sold 19,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 19 on The Billboard 200 chart. Their sophomore CD, "Stampede", opened with 28,000 units back in July 2010 to enter the chart at No. 8. The band's self-titled debut CD registered a first-week tally of 45,000 units in April 2007 to land at No. 9. So as you can see you just never know how the heck it's gonna go these days. I don't like HELLYEAH but they are a popular band mostly because of Vinnie Paul.

The only guarantee is that DROE will be an incredible album because Testament never dissapoint.

 

[jamesr7790]

I do care about album sales, because in this day and age, where the music industry has been ravaged by illegal downloading (and far fewer album sales as a consequence), it's really important that bands are able to keep themselves afloat by selling enough albums so that record companies will invest in them, and give them the money to be able to tour.

And all you can do to help that is to buy the album. Simply keeping track of the numbers won't. All I'm saying is that I'm a fan and I'm not worried about sales, I care about the music. Let the band and the label worry about how much they're selling.

 

[Angelic Slayer]

And all you can do to help that is to buy the album. Simply keeping track of the numbers won't. All I'm saying is that I'm a fan and I'm not worried about sales, I care about the music. Let the band and the label worry about how much they're selling.

I can see what you're saying, and I've never cared about record sales until recent years. I care because I don't want to see the bands I love going under. It's amazing to think that in this day and age that selling 20,000 albums would be considered as the album selling well...

It's because I care about the music so much that I care about this issue. I never cared about it before because the issues facing the music industry now didn't exist in the times when I first got into metal music.

 

[Sole Reaper]

20,000 would be almost twice what Formation did. That's really hard to do. A lot of new records come close or under sell what the last one did. I hope that this is not true for Testament, but we'll see.

 

[jamesr7790]

Well I bought 2 different versions of the album so that ought to help.

 

[Pascal]

Projected first week sales by Nuclear Blast Records.

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=177586

Support metal and keep buying albums!!!!

Nice job!

 

[Sole Reaper]

Yeah, their saying 15k-18k. It would be awesome if they do more, but it's still almost 50% more than Formation did opening week, which is damn good.

 

[Pascal]

Anything above 15k is really good these days. Nuclear Blast did an amazing job backing up this album with great marketing. If it hits 20k that would be spectacular but that's maybe asking for a little too much. That would be nearly double of what Formation sold. I wonder if digital downloads on iTunes count. Probably not.

 

[Sole Reaper]

What gets me is their facebook page. Over 658,000 like them. If even 10% of their "fans" bought the new album this week they'd have almost 66,000 copies sold. You know that more than that many people have downloaded it.

Does anyone know how much Formation did total?

 

[one man]

I was about to ask about iTunes too. Since it is possible to download particular songs, it probably doesn't count. However, whole album downloads should be included in the statistics IMO (although attributing a given sale to a particular country could be problematic). If they're not, the band is shooting itself in the foot with the massive promotion of downloading DROE through iTunes (it's probably more of a legal vs. illegal download rather than digital vs. physical copy for them, though). Anyway, I hope it does count, 'cause it would sure improve the Billboard position and gold album chances given DROE's high ranks in various categories on iTunes.

 

[one man]

What gets me is their facebook page. Over 658,000 like them. If even 10% of their "fans" bought the new album this week they'd have almost 66,000 copies sold. You know that more than that many people have downloaded it.

Does anyone know how much Formation did total?

As for FB - its even over 679k fans now (I don't have an account myself, but like probably a lot of other fans I do visit the site regularily to get updates from the band). Please, however, remember that not all of them are US citizens, and even some US citizens order the album from abroad (on the other hand, some non-Americans do get it from the USA too). Still, Testament would be on top of the world if half of those people cared to buy the album instead of stealing it, let alone buy it in the first week.

With regard to Formation - no info, as BBM ceased to post updates about 6 months after the release. A year ago or so Eric mentioned 300.000 copies, but worldwide. No clue about the US figure. Got to miss the SludgeScans. Anyway, we have a whole thread about it here: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/testament/422867-how-many-units-has-formation-damnation-sold.html

 

[black_reviewer]

20,000 would be almost twice what Formation did. That's really hard to do. A lot of new records come close or under sell what the last one did. I hope that this is not true for Testament, but we'll see.

I'm confident DROE will exceed the numbers of Formation... and I'm curious to know if there's a consolidated list with worldwide sales, I mean, I'm sure that the album must be selling well in European countries as well as in Latin America, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina have huge metal scenes and that's gotta count for something

 

[one man]

Here's what Chuck wrote on twitter:

Dark Roots of Earth is going quick in stores. You can go online to buy the cooler special editions.

Alex, in turn, keeps posting updates about the positions in the ranks on iTunes. This proves bands are obviously interested in how the album sales (someone questioned that in another thread, I recall). Anyway, let's hope it stays that way.

Hopefully we'll see a second video for this album one day.

Welcome to the forum, black reviewer!

 

[Sole Reaper]

Didn't they shoot a video for Henchman Ride and it never got released?

 

[NevermoreTHC]

I did post in the other thread about picking the album up on Saturday at an indie store and I think the fact that the indies had it out on the weekend, along with the signed poster and patch promotion, helped out significantly. I ended up buying two copies, one for myself and one for a buddy, because of the promotion. There's one asshat on Facebook who complained about the promotions (but claimed to be a huge fan) and I think it's completely fucking stupid. In this day and age, what with the poor economy and the state of the record industry, you have to do everything you can to promote the album and do giveaways to drive album sales. Little things like posters, patches, buttons, etc make the fans happy and feel like they've gotten a treat with their purchase. If it wasn't for the exorbitant price of the European mail order exclusive, I probably would've bought the version with the belt buckle as well.

I'm 40 years old but I still love these little extras. I can't even say it makes me feel like a kid again because they never did this shit back in the 80's. I remember when Megadeth's "Countdown To Extinction" came out and I got a promo t-shirt with it that I still have but has seen better days. The promo stuff really started hitting in the 90's. I remember DJing for my college radio station and all the cool stuff that used to come in and we'd get to go home with it.

I do wonder what the ratio between regular CD and deluxe edition sales are though. I can't imagine too many people forgoing bonus tracks and a DVD for $6 (at Best Buy).

One thing that was funny was when Testament's FB page put up a promotional picture of the album being available at Hot Topic, every poster basically said the same thing; fuck hot topic. LOL.

 

[Sole Reaper]

You're lucky you can go to an indie store. Where I live they don't exist anymore. I'm glad for the t-shirt/combo packs too. I just wish they had it to where you could get all of those things (patches, posters, etc) without having to buy the record 3-4 times in order to do so.