The key word there is sold. People went out and spent their money on bad because its a great album. they even physically went to the shops and paid for it. This was shoved down the throats of 500 million for free and only 33 million have even bothered to listen to it. Not quite so impressive is it?
Exactly. These U2 numbers are huge for marketing purposes, of course, and they will brag about having the biggest launch ever. But if you put into perspective, it has nothing of extraordinary and it is, in fact, a little disappointing.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, 2 million users downloaded the album in the first 3 days. The album was given for free and it nearly downloaded automatically from the iTunes store. Users had to do basically nothing to get the album and it still was downloaded only 2 million times in the first 3 days.
I also mentioned that Guns N' Roses sold 1.5 million copies of their two Use Your Illusion albums when they were released in 1991. People actually got out of their homes and went into stores to spend real money buying these albums. In 1991, there was not even the Internet to download the album after buying. Just last year, in 2013, Beyonce released an album which sold 800,000 copies on iTunes in the first 3 days. Yes, the album was sold. People downloaded it, but just after spending money buying it.
These are more impressive features than the one U2 achieved. In fact, should the Guns N' Roses or Beyonce album be available for free on the iTunes, at the distance of a mouse click, then perhaps they would be downloaded many millions more times than the U2 album.
Now, when Apple says this 33 million figures, I do not even know what it means. Were the songs accessed 33 million times or that means that 33 million different users accessed it? And what does "access" means? Download? Stream? I am not sure of it.
You can surely not compare this album to the sales (yes, actual sales) of albums such as Michael Jackson's Thriller, Bad or Dangerous, Eagles' Greatest Hits or Hotel California, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, AC/DC's Back in Black, The Beatles' 1 or Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper's, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill and other all-time best-sellers. Even the 25 million sales of U2's The Joshua Tree is a much more impressive feature than the 33 million downloads of this Songs of Innocence.
Anyway, if the album is available for free and with ease to 500 million different customers, the fact that only 6.6% listened to it is a little underwhelming.
