It’s not easy out there for legacy artists.
Madonna has had the best reviews of her life for “Confessions 2.” The result was a debut last week at number 1 with 132,000 copies sold including streaming.
But the second week sales are…weak. Hitsdailydouble.com is predicting a stunning 75% drop, down to around 34,000.
What happened? Are there just under 200,000 fans left to buy or stream her record? And this is really after Warner Music released four different versions onto streaming, and put an enormous effort into the project.
There are actually may be less than 200,000 of those fans.
This week, the Rolling Stones have released “Foreign Tongues,” their 25th studio album. Again, the reviews were sterling. Mick and Keith wore themselves out doing interviews. No rock was unturned.
The result? Hits says likely sales will be only around 61,000. “Foreign Tongues” will debut in 7th place.
It’s disappointment for the Stones. But the numbers are also similar to Paul McCartney’s recent “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” which also had tremendous marketing and insanely positive notices. McCartney could not have been lavished more by critics and press.
But “Dungeon Lane” also opened to around 65,000 copies and is gone from the iTunes top 100 albums and hasn’t sold more than 100,000 total. Fans have really missed out.
Madonna is almost 68 years old. McCartney and the Stones are 80 years old or more. They could all sell out stadiums, but they can’t convince the same fans to buy their new work. It’s not a shock, but it’s again, disappointing, that their old fans can’t be persuaded to buy their new records.
Of course, there’s no precedent for having pop and rock acts still thriving 40 or 50 years after their prime success. Tony Bennett was the exception. But even Barbra Streisand saw this happen last year with her most recent “Duets” album. More raves, but no sales.
There are plenty of arguments why all this has happened. One thing to point out is that none of these artists did the TV circuit. They released videos, and endured the interviews, but there were no appearances on morning or late night TV, or even a TV or streaming special. Would one of those have helped? We’ll never know.
