Lightning Bolt turns 8 today

JimFletcherPearlJam

Sometimes I think that much of it is due to people not buying as many albums any more. However, then I see each Adele album go diamond in the United States, as well as every Eminem album (including recent ones) still going multi-platinum. That makes me wonder where the PJ fans have been "hiding." I'm not going anywhere -- I'll tell you that much. 

JimFletcherPearlJam

I'll never understand why some PJ fans will spend thousands of dollars to travel to see the band perform live, but many of those same people seem reluctant to spend $15 on a new album in any format. 

JimFletcherPearlJam

Maybe part of my problem is that I was 24 years old when PJ was at the pinnacle of their popularity in 1995, and sometimes I just need to remind myself that 26 years have transpired since then. 

Zod

JimFletcherPearlJam said:

Sometimes I think that much of it is due to people not buying as many albums any more. However, then I see each Adele album go diamond in the United States, as well as every Eminem album (including recent ones) still going multi-platinum. That makes me wonder where the PJ fans have been "hiding." I'm not going anywhere -- I'll tell you that much. 

I think there's a few things in that.  Albums going diamond is a lot rarer than used to be.   It takes someone with very widespread popularity to sell that many albums now.

Albums as a whole have been on the decline, but yes there are still some outliers.

If your a classic rock band and you put out a new album on most any week (save for when a superbig pop artist puts one out) you've probably got the #1 album with 100 or 200,000 copies sold.   That's a far cry from when Pearl Jam sold a million a week..

We're long past the album hey dey :(

igotid88

Zod said:

JimFletcherPearlJam said:

Sometimes I think that much of it is due to people not buying as many albums any more. However, then I see each Adele album go diamond in the United States, as well as every Eminem album (including recent ones) still going multi-platinum. That makes me wonder where the PJ fans have been "hiding." I'm not going anywhere -- I'll tell you that much. 

I think there's a few things in that.  Albums going diamond is a lot rarer than used to be.   It takes someone with very widespread popularity to sell that many albums now.

Albums as a whole have been on the decline, but yes there are still some outliers.

If your a classic rock band and you put out a new album on most any week (save for when a superbig pop artist puts one out) you've probably got the #1 album with 100 or 200,000 copies sold.   That's a far cry from when Pearl Jam sold a million a week..

We're long past the album hey dey :(

Lightning Bolt was number one with about 160k. Gigaton sold 63k it's first week.
Mostly hip hop artists are selling the equivalent to 100-200k the first week mainly due to streaming. 90% of the sales are streaming and the rest is CD/vinyl/cassettes. Gigaton sold 57k actual albums the first week.

JimFletcherPearlJam

It'd be cool to see PJ's next studio album released as a double-length album. Perhaps 24 songs, but not as long as the Lost Dogs compilation, which is 30 or more songs. As a double album, 50,000 actual units sold would count for 100,000 copies due to the length of the album. That was the situation with the Pumpkins' Mellon Collie release. It's easy for me to say though, because I don't have to make 24 new songs. 

igotid88

I doubt Pearl Jam will ever do this. But Elton might have the number one album next week all because his duet with Dua Lipa already has 169 million plays at least on Spotify.  The only way Pearl Jam would increase streaming numbers 

igotid88

This is from last year's Spotify end of year total. Obviously there are other streaming platforms. But this was with a new album. Plus the bump Present Tense had with the Michael Jordan doc. I'm sure PJ Radio takes away and the people who don't want to stream. 

JimFletcherPearlJam

I'd also love a double-length album just for the extra music. I mean, we got Riot Act in November 2002 followed by the double-length Lost Dogs compilation in November 2003. That's more than 40 songs in a 12-month period. Wow! 

JimFletcherPearlJam

I just bought another vinyl copy of No Code on the Barnes and Noble web site. They're out at our local physical locations, but Barnes and Noble has some remaining somewhere. 

igotid88