Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ has beaten Eminem’s ‘Recovery’ this week! 156,000 copies sold for ‘The Suburbs’ in the US against ‘only’ 152,000 for ‘Recovery’. Well it’s only for this week, and Eminem has sold close to 2 million albums.
But ‘The Suburbs’ has debuted no.1 in the charts, did better than ‘Neon Bible’ (only no.2 at that time) and this is the first no.1 album for a Merge Records, which has released artists like Spoon, She and Him, and the Magnetic Fields.
But only 59,000 real CDs were sold, with a considerable and not surprising increase for the digital sales, which have represented 62% of the total sales for the first week.
Wasn’t the digital album on sale for only $3.99 on Amazon for a week? When I saw this price I wondered about the real value of an album. It is still stealing if you download it illegally, but are you a lesser thief when it is only $3.99? It is now sold for $7.99, still a deal.
I don’t want to sound snob or anything like this, but it is so exceptional an album I really like becomes no.1 in the charts, it’s probably a first for me.
Now I also wonder about Arcade Fire’s future, will they continue to grow? In 20 years or so, will we look at them as we now look at the Beatles? Or any other band of this importance? (I did not want to go with Bruce Springsteen or U2).
I don’t know but they are the biggest band in the US this week.