Like we figured, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories had a stellar first week. Their fourth album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, with 339,000 copies sold. The second week? While it was still at #1, the sales dipped 73% from the first week sales totals (around 90,000 sold), causing some blogs to wonder if the Daft Punk hype machine had burst, and that this album, which they claim was hyped as "the savior of dance music," was really more of a failure.
Sadly, they haven't looked into all of the facts... namely, Billboard, which had the following tidbit of information in their report on the album's second week sales slump:
It's down 73% in its second week, a not alarming sophomore frame decline, considering a lot of the album's first week was bolstered with digital pre-orders.
Comparably, Daft Punk's second week slide is only slightly less steep that the average fall for No. 1 debuts this year. Of the 15 No. 1 bows so far in 2013, the average second week decline has been 68%. "Random Access Memories" is the seventh No. 1 debut this year to slip by more than 70% in its second week. The largest tumble is owned by Justin Bieber's "Believe" (79.4%) while the lightest fall belongs to Josh Groban's "All That Echoes" (50.4%).
Did you catch that, everyone? Let's rewind a bit; Random Access Memories was announced on a sunny Saturday afternoon in March, and was immediately available for pre-order. Now with approximately two-months of pre-sales being thrown into the first week sales of Random Access Memories, why are you surprised that the first week numbers were so high? Especially if the so-called hype machine was running at full speed, which it was. This isn't about Random Access Memories "falling flat," but more about the way music is purchased and consumed in an Internets age.
Think about it: if Random Access Memories had magically NOT leaked, nor had it been streaming on iTunes and Spotify leading up to the album's released, the album could have possibly gone gold in its first week. We can't/won't assume more units would have been sold the second week, but you can't point and laugh at an album that's rise and fall is similar to the rises and falls of many other popular albums of today.
You can have beef with Random Access Memories and how drop-less it is, and how that doesn't stand well with the "EDM of today," but going in on the second-week sales? This isn't rocket science, nor are you breaking ground. You truly end up looking confused, and worse, come off as a hater.
