Last night, someone told me he thought Lil Wayne’s sales dropped off more than everyone else who’s sold a million in a week. I felt he was incorrect, but had not run the numbers yet. So i did. Here are the results.
I specifically looked at artists who had sold at least a million albums in one week. It didn’t have to be their first week.
It appears there are a couple of albums where the decline wasn’t as much as everyone else. So i removed those artists for the next graph to see if we could visually detect a difference
For the most part it looks like there were a couple of artists who dropped off drastically and thus have a slope larger than the others (Lady Gaga, N'Sync, and Backstreet Boys). There were a couple who didn’t really drop off much at all and thus have a slope smaller than the others, one that is more horizontal (see Eminem and 50 Cent… maybe Usher). But everyone else has a similar drop off. This is all based on the visual.
Then, I became interested in how these types of sales (instantaneous) were affected when it came to the recession… So, i took a look at before 2008 and after 2008.
Basically, we’re seeing what many musicologists have spoken on for years - we can’t compare music sales now to music sales 10 years ago when it comes to initial sales or the ability to move huge numbers in one week… even among the elite music pushers. However, when it comes to the slopes, it doesn’t appear to differentiate between then and now.
Finally, I created a table with the actual slopes printed so you could view those numbers. It’s sorted by highest to lowest slope.
And there you have it. Keep in mind, I haven’t loved a Wayne album since the original “Carter”. But the facts are the facts. The numbers are the numbers. His sales from the platinum week to the next aren’t different from the other people who’ve done it, not significantly anyway.
2000 was a great year for music… most of the albums that i couldn’t include came out either in 1999 or too early in 2000 to get the numbers from Hits Daily Double. What was so special about that year?
To answer the original question, it doesn’t appear that Lil Wayne’s weekly sales fell off by much more than anyone else… maybe people just really wish him to fail? I don’t know.
Update: Someone suggested to me that even with this particular group, more initial sales meant bigger falls. That’s actually the point I’m making with the platinum sellers vs everyone else. But I don’t know if we can make the case that higher initial sells with this group means steeper slopes. So I ran a visual of that next. If higher initial sales were related to the percent change in sales for this group, we would see a positive correlation on the graph ran.
***the y-axis or response axis takes the absolute value of the negative slopes from the table so that you’re seeing how much of a negative slope is associated with each point. If higher sales (the x-axis or horizontal axis) are associated with more negative slopes, then the scatter plot would show an overall positive correlation. I don’t see it. In fact, I would argue that i see a negative correlation… meaning higher initial sales actually corresponds to a less negative slope within this group of artists.