Commentary

In the face of complete and utter gloom & doom in the recorded music business, how does an album manage to sell more than 1 million copies in a single week? Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III” managed to pull off this rather astounding feat by something rather old fashioned… being good. Acclaimed by not only fans, but mainstream music critics in publications such as Rolling Stone and The New York Times, “Tha Carter III” is an anomaly in a sea of sales distress.

Never heard of Lil Wayne? Don’t worry, neither did I until recently. But Lil Wayne’s road to a million sales week flies in the face of conventional sales tactics. Not only has he freely contributed his songs to popular mixtapes (the equivalent of free or $5 CD songs samplers for the Volvo crowd at Starbucks), but the full album was maliciously leaked by a member of the mixtape community weeks prior to street date. A #1 song (”Lollipop”) definitely helped, but in a world of a la carte downloads, the album format is not nearly as enticing.

While not a secret in the music industry, but perhaps to the music-buying public, album sales are actually weighted depending on where an album is purchased. If you bought “Tha Carter III” at a mom & pop record store (which are far and few between), a single sale may actually count as three album sales in terms of Billboard/SoundScan numbers, the most popular sales figure. So while a Target sale will count as a single sale, the album sales are skewed because many times such rap albums are sold at neighborhood stores, but at the same time may not be available at Wal-Mart, one of the top music retailers, due to explicit content.

But that explanation does not account for the entire million. Given that Lil Wayne’s last full album appeared three years ago (a good amount of time in the rap world), there was fan anticipation for something beyond his mixtape and guest appearances. The “event” album is now very difficult to create in a time of unreliable marketing… in the old days, you could safely rely on radio and MTV to launch an album, but in so many ways, neither outlet really exists anymore.

So now the most powerful marketing is truly word of mouth and the idea that something is popular because it’s popular.

Will Coldplay softrock Lil Wayne out of the #1 position next week? All signs point to yes, but without a million+ bow.

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