Road in the charts

[Spiner202]

hasn't made Canadian chart at all!

I did my best . Bought the CD and vinyl, and usually I only get CD.

[cooperrocks]

Wow, those numbers are disappointing to say the least. Based on what was happening Worldwide, I figured the new album was going to come in slightly under that of Detroit Stories but not by much. It is hard to say because the industry has changed so much, but I am assuming (and someone correct me if I am wrong) that if you Preorder an album but it hasn't shipped out, it doesn't count officially yet as a sale because the order could be cancelled before it is sent out.

I don't know what the deal was but so many fans ended up not getting sent the album when it was released. Many people still are waiting for their copy to arrive. That doesn't help matters and has destroyed some of the momentum. I don't know who to blame on that one but Ear Music (Alice's current label) hasn't had those issues in the past and the last few albums since Alice has been with Ear have charted well. This one hasn't. It isn't to consider if the 3 singles that were released actually hurt the excitement or not. It is also interesting when you consider Alice did some big shows with Def Leppard and Motley Crue and now with Rob Zombie but neither tour has driven any sales. Of course, it would be a fair argument to say when you have a new album coming out and you are playing in front of big crowds hyping a new album a little bit at the shows and maybe playing at least one new song isn't a bad idea. It is just too bad, because I really think the relatively poor distribution of this album has already killed it.

[del]

As I said earlier, a couple of hundred sales can make a big difference in the lower half of the 200. Here is what Billboard say:

“Sometimes it takes less than 1000 albums in one week to make a Billboard Chart, even 450 sales could make it to #200. ”

And

“Sales up to the release date of your CD count towards your 1st week sales that’s why pre-order’s of your album are so important, your sales prior to the actual release date of the album count as first week sales.”

None of this is good news.

[Mr. Misdemeanor]

Not good. It's an uphill battle to begin with considering the state of rock music these days.

Three things that might help the next release

1) Get Alice in the news.I don't mean Twitter mob bs either. Every time Ozzy does anything Sharon gets some story trending in the news. "Ozzy is sick" "Ozzy cheated on me" "Ozzy is back on drugs" etc.

2) Guest stars. You've got to pull out all the stops these days. An appearance by Dave Grohl, James Hetfield or whoever might make a big difference in sales and publicity. You've got 79 minutes to fill on a cd - make use of it.

3) Use a focus group when deciding on which "singles" to release. Cooper fans have differing tastes but I think the general consensus is that Big Goodbye and 100 Miles would have gotten fans more hyped than "I'm Alice."

[revinkevin]

Hard pass on all the guest musicians and song writers. That’s been a sore point with me. Like it or hate it Road seems more focused and the band is solid. Solid enough that most can’t distinguish some guest guitarist from a band number. As for the next album I’m pretty sure it’s with the original band. Writing and playing with a guest guitarist on each song filling in for Glen. As for Alice putting out a gold or platinum album these days is dreaming. That goes for about 95 percent of rock bands. The days of terrestrial radio cranking out new rock tunes while you drive down the road are long gone. That’s what you have Pandora or Spotify for. The money that is made by rock bands today comes from concerts and merchandise sales. Hence the reason why many concert tickets go for a hundred bucks and more and a t shirt goes for 50 bucks and more.

[cooperrocks]

Hard pass on all the guest musicians and song writers. That’s been a sore point with me. Like it or hate it Road seems more focused and the band is solid. Solid enough that most can’t distinguish some guest guitarist from a band number. As for the next album I’m pretty sure it’s with the original band. Writing and playing with a guest guitarist on each song filling in for Glen. As for Alice putting out a gold or platinum album these days is dreaming. That goes for about 95 percent of rock bands. The days of terrestrial radio cranking out new rock tunes while you drive down the road are long gone. That’s what you have Pandora or Spotify for. The money that is made by rock bands today comes from concerts and merchandise sales. Hence the reason why many concert tickets go for a hundred bucks and more and a t shirt goes for 50 bucks and more.

All reasonable points RevinKevin but I don't think anyone expects a hard rock or metal album unless you are maybe Metallica to go gold or platinum these days. However, it is fair to look at what modern trends and numbers are. Just a couple of years ago, Detroit Stories did extremely well the first week by modern standards and Paranormal did good first week business as well. Now something has changed, what are those factors, what happened? The last couple of albums charted well despite no radio airplay etc.

I agree with you about bringing in guests. In my view, that has been an issue in recent years. All the albums are good but have a bit of a sterile feel to them and some of that stems from using so many outside musicians. I would actually contend that in a day and age where albums don't sell that many copies, it is an opportunity for an artist to branch out and try some different things. That is what is a bit strange about the new album. All the songs are basically 3 minute songs almost like they were written to appeal to radio when there is zero chance the new album is going to get much airplay.

Good post Kevin!

[revinkevin]

I have to say I’m rather surprised on how poorly the album showed on the charts. Especially as I posted earlier that on Pandora I heard 4 different cuts from the album when I hit play random hard rock songs. I’ve never heard that from any Alice album in its first week of release. Throw in the fact that his Vampire European tour was rather successful and he’s played to large crowds with the Def Leopard tour and his present tour with Rob Zombie one would think that there would be some generated interest. Which leads me to think that possibly there was a bit of an error in the report ?? The only other thing that crosses my mind and I hope it’s not the case, but perhaps his misguided comments on a certain issue has indeed caused some backlash which I have read in some outlets.I think the days of there is no such thing as bad publicity just spell the name right are long gone.

[KeithGale]

Having checked Music Week, it seems Road had 4,563 sales for the first week, it sounds low, the top album had managed 7,649 sales. Claire Richard's new entry at number one, obviously she would have a broader appeal than Alice. Most of Road would be physical sales, whereas Richards would have a bigger percentage of downloads/stream. This is UK sales only, either way I think the charts are just a promotional tool for labels like Ear, though it would be great to have sold 40,000 in the first week, the aim is to keep the awareness and hope sales tick over for the foreseeable future. In years time, it would be interesting to see what the actual sales were for a year.

[cooperrocks]

You know what is interesting and I don't what it means but it didn't chart well here in the United States but it seems it didn't chart at all in Canada and usually his chart numbers are good in Canada. In other words, it didn't do well in North America.

This is just my own theory but to me what may have hurt it some was the first single, "I'm Alice." I didn't hate the song but I must admit I thought the lyrics were kind of cheesy on that one. I heard several people, many of which are just hard rock and metal fans in general, not caring for the song. In other words, I don't think it helped entice any casual fans into buying the album and even though the second and third songs released rock a little more, I think the casual fan had already dismissed the album fair or not. Though singles aren't really singles any more because radio won't play them, they still can matter a little because most bands will do a cheap lyric video to a few of the songs on their albums and can make a small difference.

[Agrophile in Texas]

Why not the ballad? He had success with the ballads in the mid to late 70s in the States and Canada, would that have drawn in some non or casual-Alice fans as those singles did? (Or has current tastes shifted away from that type?)

[del]

Like it or not we should realise that the number of core fans actually buying product has been small for quite a long time now. The fact that most pre order or buy in the first week at least gets him somewhere in the charts and allows him to register a hit of some description. Good for the record books and the ability to talk about longevity but that’s about it.

Sales after week one normally collapse so your 4000 in the UK drops by about 70-90% and he drops right down the chart. That’s the same for most older acts of all genres who have core fans buying product so nothing unusual nowadays.

As 80% plus of music consumers now stream, most casual fans of most acts are streaming rather than buying. This creates a real problem because if the buying and streaming numbers have dropped or never been there in the first week or so there is massively reduced visibility on playlists and any momentum is gone two weeks later. More or less the only way to keep or build visibility is for streaming numbers to sustain or build and I doubt enough Alice fans could ever stream enough to really make a difference.

There are a few ways to break out suddenly in the future but they are long shots and in reality two things that have been major issues for a while are age and genre. Rock is an old man’s game now and classic rock is something dad or grandad do. Being honest about it, younger people seldom relate to or have interest in acts from a different age. The music is not relevant to them unless it’s an anthem in a genre close to them. Alice has two that register to younger folk, Poison and Schools Out but for many these are all they are interested in. Token gestures which might get them to a gig for a night out but not much else.

Add all this to the fact that Alice’s core fans are reducing naturally like every single act as it ages and we have the reality check. That’s life.

One positive point is that Alice has over 5.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. This can obviously fluctuate from month to month but has grown by a million or so in the last year or two. Most will be your casual listener who may become more regular so there is good news there to some degree.

[Spiner202]

One thing I'd like to bring up about Canadian chart numbers (acknowledging that I don't think any of us actually understand how they come up with these numbers) - it is very difficult to actually obtain physical copies of anything in Canada. We had one major music chain (HMV) that shut down many years ago. We still have Sunrise Records, who has a mediocre presence, but their ability to get new releases is pretty limited. Amazon is completely hit or miss. They will arbitrarily change release dates, meaning that even though you can go listen to an album on Spotify or Apple Music, it hasn't even been released from Amazon's point of view.

Fortunately, none of this impacted me for Road, as my copies ordered from Amazon actually showed up on release day, but that's a rarity amongst everything I pre-order. My main point is that if you're a physical music collector in Canada, you're probably extremely disillusioned with the whole thing because you rarely get anything in the first week. It wouldn't surprise me if the charts are 99% digital-only at this point. After all, if Amazon can randomly change the release date, how can a sale be counted in the charts for the actual release week?

[Shoesalesman]

We still have Sunrise Records, who has a mediocre presence, but their ability to get new releases is pretty limited.

Sunrise Records usually puts out four or five copies of a new album, but I went to buy Road and it was the only copy in the store. I commented to the clerk that I got the last one but she said it's the only copy they ordered.

[cooperrocks]

We still have Sunrise Records, who has a mediocre presence, but their ability to get new releases is pretty limited.

Sunrise Records usually puts out four or five copies of a new album, but I went to buy Road and it was the only copy in the store. I commented to the clerk that I got the last one but she said it's the only copy they ordered.

That's an issue too. When the few actual music stores left either don't order any copies of a new album or maybe one, it is easy to overlook the album or you go in to buy a physical copy and when they don't have any you just order it online and wait for it come or occasionally just forget about it.

[pitkin88]

Might as well sell them at the shows.

[Dragontown]

"Road" did not chart on the Italian 100. (DS entered at 39)
There was a delay in the actual distribution. The local distributor said the record label was probably still not active at the end of August and delayed many of its releases, not just Alice's. At the end it came out the 31st.

Not surprised however by the poor charting worldwide. This time around there was no press hyping for any artist collaboration, and the band is even playing a double-headliner tour not promoting the new album at all! Once again no actual videos for the singles were shot (for DS at least we had Social Debris with Alice singing).

[Si]

Once again no actual videos for the singles were shot (for DS at least we had Social Debris with Alice singing).

Interestingly the trailer clip for 'I'm Alice' DID feature a short clip of Alice actually singing the song chorus, but that was missing from the final lyric video cut.

[lordcatfish]

UK charts for the second week

#5 - rock albums
#6 - independent albums
#12 - album sales
#12 - physical album sales
#15 - Scottish albums chart
#61 - album downloads

Fallen out of the top 100 of the official chart. Coming up short on the streaming side, as we all know.

[pitkin88]

UK charts for the second week

#5 - rock albums
#6 - independent albums
#12 - album sales
#12 - physical album sales
#15 - Scottish albums chart
#61 - album downloads

Fallen out of the top 100 of the official chart. Coming up short on the streaming side, as we all know.

No disrespect to the Jocks but why does Scotland need an album chart?

[Si]

No disrespect to the Jocks but why does Scotland need an album chart?

Because it's a country, like England, France, Italy and the USA are countries. Why shouldn't it have one?