6.7.13 Adam News and Info

First of all, I think that Adam's/Trespassing's global sales performance and chart positions are impressive. Particularly impressive in some non-English speaking markets like Brazil and Hungry. That bodes well for A3. But it is hard to rack up any numbers in most of these small markets.

I think that 400K is a stretch although not outlandish. My guess is around 300K. But probably makes little difference because I have no doubt it will sell more than 400K eventually. Trespassing did well enough to get Adam A3.   And if A3 is as good as I hope it is, it will lift sales for Trespassing and FYE.

>> For a bit of perspective, look at this document. In 2012 the #44 to #50 Global albums only sold 1 million copies worldwide  www.aria.com.au/documents/RIN2013.pdf  Yes, that is the top 50 albums! So selling 300K or 400K in this environment is great.

The problems the recording industry are having making money are global, not specific to one artist or album.

**

There is no way to translate chart positions into sales units. Albums typically peak in debut week and that is what Trespassing did. The only debut week numbers I can find for Trespassing is 78,000 in the US and #1 in Canada with 7,300 copies units sold.  The UK debut week was less than 10,000 units because #11 that week was just under 10K. (That is the closest I can find to #16 for that week.)

US is probably more than 50% of Trespassing sales: Last number in the US was 173K at the end of December. Trespassing has not re-entered the BB 200 in 2013 and #200 has been moving between 1,700 - 3,000 units, let's say it sold around 30K for the past 22 weeks. So that would put it about 200K in the US. To be at 400K that would mean it would have to have sold 200K in the rest of the world. That seem very unlikely to me since it doesn't have sales certifications anywhere.

The US is the largest market in the world and the top 10 markets represent 85% of album sales. China is the #20 market which is small. Local repertoire artists dominate non-English language markets.

Japan's is close to the same size as the US. Japanese and Korea artist dominate their charts. Sales numbers are non-existant. This is because the retail channel is so fragmented there and there is no centralized reporting just reports from sample retailers.

Here are sales by country for the top markets.

Global recorded music industry revenues (includes sync and licensing revenues)


Finally, there was a comment when Adam was in South Africa that Trespassing was almost gold in South Africa which is 20,000 units shipped. But that may have been a bit premature because it is still not certified there.