I couldn't agree more. As you know, there were tons of albums for decades that really weren't great albums but labels released a good solid single or two and that sold the album. In the 80's, if you had a decent single and MTV played your video you had a hit. In the case of pop metal (hair bands), you released a hard driving single but the second single needed to be a ballad and if the ballad took off you had a huge selling album even if the rest of the album stunk.Mr. Misdemeanor wrote: ↑Sun Sep 17, 2023 2:34 pmYou can't hide a bad album these days. In the past an artist could have a terrible album and still sell millions of copies because of one great single. You cant do that now because the fans can listen to an album on Youtube or wherever before forking over their cash. So who is going to pre-order an album now? Mega fans who want to support an artist no matter what, or people who have a great enough faith in an artist that they feel almost certain that an album will be good. You are going to lose some of those folks in the second category if they feel burned by your previous release. We were talking about ACDC earlier and I think their follow-up to Back in Black is a good example of what I'm talking about. For Those About to Rock sold well, but it just isn't in the same league as Back in Black. I think this is one of the reasons Flick of the Switch did so poorly despite being a very good album.
So pre-order sales of Road may be a result of disappointment with Detroit Stories. Other people may have just listened to the album on Youtube and didn't care for it.
Yes times have vastly changed and some of it frankly does fall on fans who want something for nothing and refuse to pay for music. But you still have to have a gauge of an album's success. The truth is Taylor Swift, whether she is your cup of tea or not is playing stadiums, having tons of Top 10 singles, and she is still getting gold and platinum albums because her fans will buy her music. I can't help but respect how she and her management team run her business.
Part of the problem now is you have bands putting out 3 or 4 songs from an upcoming album. They basically gave away the store before an album is even released and if the songs don't excite fans, even the small sales an artist can get these days become even less. I still don't think "I'm Alice" was a good first song to release. Yes there is humor in it but it comes across as self-parody so the casual hard rock fan or the fan that either likes the either heavier or darker stuff are not going to take the song seriously.
And no matter anyone's feelings toward Detroit Stories good or bad, when it went to Number One on the physical sales chart, Alice's label promoted that and bragged on it (And they should have), Alice frequently mentioned it in interviews, and if you bought a t-shirt at his show, on the bag they placed the Merch in, it mentioned Alice's Number One album. In other words, at least for marketing purposes IT MATTERED. Now, a couple of years later, the chart numbers were not nearly as good so it gets no mention and everyone is saying "Well chart positions don't matter in today's world." It mattered two years ago.