Blog: STAT ATAK: How Many?

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Today we're doing the NITTY GRITTY of COMMERCE - here's the Top Twenty Selling ITEMS that we've released:

ITEMS	%
WE VALIDATE!	14.17
Shed Anthems	9.87
This Is Not A Library	9.65
Warriors Of Nanpantan	9.61
Say It With Words	8.95
Milk & Baubles	6.32
The Lesson Of the Smiths/The Gay Train	5.92
Hey Hey 16K T-Shirt	5.57
The Uberset	5.26
A Million Ukeleles	4.08
Better Things To Do	3.77
It Only Works Because You're Here/My Exciting Life In ROCK	2.94
Do The Indie Kid	2.76
Ukelele T-Shirt	2.67
Born With The Century	2.46
All Around My House	2.11
A Church Hall Of Sound	1.8
Clubbing In The Week	1.14
I VALIDATE! T-Shirt	0.96
Xmas Gig Ticket	0.04

OK, a LOT of things to say before we ANALYSE. First of all I've NOT included sales via digital distribution largely because I'm MONTHS behind with logging it in The Database Of ROCK because it's so finickety and complicated, ALSO because It'd be a top SEVERAL HUNDRED of sales because so much is done by a song by song basis. Secondly this only goes back to 2003, when This Is Not A Library came out and I started keeping track of such things. Finally, I've shown sales figures in terms of percentages just because it felt, well, SLIGHTLY VULGAR to do the raw figures. Any MATH LOONS can probably work it out though!

With all that in mind, what do we see here? Personally I'm EXTREMELY pleased to see WE VALIDATE! is so far out ahead of other comparable albums, having had less time to sell itself in, although it has to be said that a) This Is Not A Library sold OUT a couple of years ago [re-release still pending, to be considered once I've paid for the NEXT album!] and b) Say It With Words may well have sold more than BOTH of them, as ALL the sales logged there are from at least two years after it was first available. We shall never know.

It's also worth noting that recent singles haven't really done very well in Physical Sales. To be fair to Do The Indie Kid it WAS on 7" vinyl, which most people simply can't play, and it DID do pretty well on downloads, but I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by how few we shifted of It Only Works Because You're Here, especially as it's my FAVOURITE. Still, it's a clear message to our MERCHANDISING DEPARTMENT: Proper old-fashioned EPs, with NEW stuff on them, will still do all right, but who in this day and age wants to shell out for a CD with just one or two new tracks on? I don't _think_ we're going to be putting out any more traditional singles, not from THIS album anyway, but I've got all sorts of ideas for VIDEO SINGLES to try and promote individual songs in more TWENTY FIRST CENTURY ways.

But I digress. Suffice to say, Albums Good, Singles Not So Good and T-Shirts Depend On The T-Shirt themselves. I mean, goodness me but the Hey Hey 16K t-shirts have certainly shifted, but the others (especially the I Validate tour t-shirts) have been slower to move. Look out for some COMBO DEALS on old t-shirts and the new album when it finally comes out, there's SHELVING I'd like to reclaim!

Right then, after all that POLICY DISCUSSION tomorrow will see the final STAT ATAK looking at everybody's favourite category: MISCELLANEOUS!

posted 7/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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