Im not an expert.........
Fri November 9, 2007 Eagles' marketing soars ahead, but music stays mired in past
By George Lang
The Oklahoman Until Billboard magazine announced on Wednesday that it was changing its policies for sales tracking, the top-selling music release in the country, Eagles' "Long Road Out of Eden,” was nowhere to be found on the album charts. They were dominated by Us Weekly's favorite mom, Britney Spears. As the music business continues to splinter, and artists find nontraditional ways to market their recordings, the standard methods of accounting for success were ill-equipped to report the sales of musicians who abandon the major labels and classic distribution schemes. Eagles chose to distribute "Long Road Out of Eden” exclusively through Wal-Mart stores as well as Sam's Club, the stores' Web sites and Eaglesband.com, so its sales were not reported through SoundScan.
So recognition for the band's first sales figures fell to Wal-Mart itself until Wednesday, when Billboard announced it would begin reporting sales for discs with exclusive deals with single retailers. Wal-Mart released a statement Tuesday announcing that the band sold more than anyone else in the business during its first week of release — more than 700,000 copies.
"We were confident that Eagles fans would embrace ‘Long Road Out of Eden,' but it has exceeded our first week projections. With the holiday season approaching, we are confident that the double CD package will be one of the biggest sellers in Wal-Mart history,” said Gary Severson, senior vice president of entertainment at Wal-Mart. "We've notified the RIAA of the sales to quickly certify ‘Long Road Out of Eden's' multi-platinum status.”
Well, that might get a laugh or two from the Recording Industry Association of America, if only for the hubris of that "multi-platinum status” claim. First-week sales of 700,000 copies means that "Long Road Out of Eden” is a gold record with 200,000 to spare, but it is still 300,000 short of platinum. It's undoubtedly going to meet those benchmarks, but calm down already.
I might have been one of those 700,000 people snapping up "Long Road Out of Eden” if it had been released — oh, I don't know — in 1982. "Eden” arrives 28 years after the band's previous studio release, 1979's "The Long Run,” ridiculed as "the long one” by petulant music writers of the day because it took three whole years for the band to follow-up its landmark 1976 disc, "Hotel California.”
But so much has happened musically in the past three decades, and upon initial inspection of "Eden,” the disc plays as if none of it happened. A lot of people are clearly happy about that. And I'm a realist; I didn't expect the band to bring in Nigel Godrich or Scott Storch to make them sound as 21st century as their marketing plan. Still, what did Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit do on their quarter-century summer vacation?
Eagles missed their window with me, which closed around the end of the '80s and Henley's "The End of the Innocence.” It re-opened when I saw the band's MTV special, "Hell Freezes Over” in 1994 and was impressed with how Eagles' harmonies held together. But it shut again out of boredom and impatience with a band whose music I enjoyed when I was 12.
Back then, I also watched "Fantasy Island” every week and carried a Goody comb in my back pocket. There's no need to go back to those, either.
Read George Lang's Staticblog on NewsOK.com.
but, it's pretty darn good IMO.
Fri November 9, 2007