U2 would have sold 450-500K first week; LP 200K+ first day
Quote:
The new U2 album got off to a decent start Tuesday. Following Apple's press event and a live announcement that Apple is giving away Songs of Innocence to all 500 million iTunes account holders, U.S. iTunes users downloaded the album about 200,000 times, sources tell Billboard.
Looking forward, the question is how many units the album will sell when it's available to other retailers and digital services once Apple's five-week exclusive expires. Sources around the industry estimate the album would have achieved first-week sales between 450,000 and 500,000 units in a normal release. One source at Universal Music Group tells Billboard that the current working number for first-week sales is 150,000 units.
They were paid by Apple for the release but we didn't see that part. Same thing when Magna Carta Holy Grail went platinum, Jay bought the first million so threats obviously the reason it was free for the first million.
Hold up!! 150k of the FREE album will actually count towards Soundscan when it's released for real in October??? I'm really confused!! That sentence in the article still doesn't make sense.
I think they are predicting 150k first week when the album is actually released when it is released for $$$.
It is sitting in my library right now. I don't get why they would even place it on people's library like that. People who don't have enough space (like me) will see this whole album taking up space.
To say they would have sold 200k because 200k people downloaded the album makes no sense. 200k people downloaded the album because the album was free. If the album was at a normal cost, that number would not have remained the same.