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If Rebel Heart hadn't leaked....
how well do you think it would be doing?
It left the U.S. Billboard 200 after ten weeks and dropped to #95 on the U.K. Top 100 last week in its twelfth week. The only major market that it’s still charting in is Germany. The album has sold an estimated 700,000 copies worldwide to date making it the third highest selling album of 2015 by a female artist. As good as this is, it proves how dire record sales are in the music industry. It has sold 72,000 copies in the U.K. and nearly 190,000 copies in the U.S.
I spoke to four fans on a Madonna forum last week who think that Rebel Heart would have been a big hit had it not leaked, but I don't really agree with them. It’s Madonna’s strongest album for ten years (that's the saddest thing about the leak), but some people forget that she’s not as popular as she once was. It's not like someone her age is going to sell 8.6 million copies of an album in seven months like 1989 by Taylor Swift. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure what the album would have sold had it not leaked, but I think it would have sold about one million copies worldwide, a good figure for a singer 32 years into her career. If you look back at Hard Candy and MDNA neither of them had a lot of stability on the Billboard 200 and the U.K. Top 100:
Hard Candy
Billboard 200
1-3-8-9-11-14-31-36-46-57-63-69-85-95-110-116-130-118-146-148-160-178-183-153-149-156-166-156-171-0-184
U.K. Top 100
1-2-5-7-13-22-26-24-20-24-14-10-15-16-18-23-28-31-35-35-29-39-51-56-67-89-111-130-159
MDNA
Billboard 200
1-8-18-34-45-65-77-81-105-140-94-142-181
U.K. Top 100
1-7-13-13-28-38-39-36-56-50-59-129-177-170-143-110-59-112-193
Even without a leak I doubt Rebel Heart would have altered a pattern that has been occurring since 2008. Madonna needs a hit single to sell an album, and Rebel Heart didn't have one. Plus, older artists rarely have stability on the chart with a new album. Rebel Heart will probably re-enter the chart when the tour starts (MDNA did), but the effect won't be very big.
Rebel Heart
Billboard 200
2-21-34-57-41-77-130-155-169
U.K. Top 100
2-7-21-22-28-41-37-40-40-70-75-95
It left the U.S. Billboard 200 after ten weeks and dropped to #95 on the U.K. Top 100 last week in its twelfth week. The only major market that it’s still charting in is Germany. The album has sold an estimated 700,000 copies worldwide to date making it the third highest selling album of 2015 by a female artist. As good as this is, it proves how dire record sales are in the music industry. It has sold 72,000 copies in the U.K. and nearly 190,000 copies in the U.S.
I spoke to four fans on a Madonna forum last week who think that Rebel Heart would have been a big hit had it not leaked, but I don't really agree with them. It’s Madonna’s strongest album for ten years (that's the saddest thing about the leak), but some people forget that she’s not as popular as she once was. It's not like someone her age is going to sell 8.6 million copies of an album in seven months like 1989 by Taylor Swift. Of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure what the album would have sold had it not leaked, but I think it would have sold about one million copies worldwide, a good figure for a singer 32 years into her career. If you look back at Hard Candy and MDNA neither of them had a lot of stability on the Billboard 200 and the U.K. Top 100:
Hard Candy
Billboard 200
1-3-8-9-11-14-31-36-46-57-63-69-85-95-110-116-130-118-146-148-160-178-183-153-149-156-166-156-171-0-184
U.K. Top 100
1-2-5-7-13-22-26-24-20-24-14-10-15-16-18-23-28-31-35-35-29-39-51-56-67-89-111-130-159
MDNA
Billboard 200
1-8-18-34-45-65-77-81-105-140-94-142-181
U.K. Top 100
1-7-13-13-28-38-39-36-56-50-59-129-177-170-143-110-59-112-193
Even without a leak I doubt Rebel Heart would have altered a pattern that has been occurring since 2008. Madonna needs a hit single to sell an album, and Rebel Heart didn't have one. Plus, older artists rarely have stability on the chart with a new album. Rebel Heart will probably re-enter the chart when the tour starts (MDNA did), but the effect won't be very big.
Rebel Heart
Billboard 200
2-21-34-57-41-77-130-155-169
U.K. Top 100
2-7-21-22-28-41-37-40-40-70-75-95
0
Comments
Iron Maiden's last album (who have been round longer than Madge) leaked weeks before the official release and that went to Number 1 in 28 countries - including the UK. And that album had a lot less hype and radio play than Rebel Heart.
Too much unnecessary information that noone cares about. First sentence would suffice. Though the other bit I suppose helped me to know this was about that old lady 😊
All of this
The unfinished version leaked in December I think
The finished version leaked late Feb
It's the fans she caters for now and admittedly she has a lot of them but it just is what it is
Lets hope that karma tree doesn't shake too much eh!
There’s no way Madonna will ever sell a million copies of a new album again in the US like Barbra Streisand has with Partners. Hard Candy hasn't sold a million copies, despite being released seven years ago, Celebration is certified gold because it's a double album (they count sales twice), and MDNA is certified gold because 185,000 copies came from the album/ticket bundle, that explains the colossal 86.7% sales decrease in its second week, the biggest of the SoundScan era. Madonna isn’t the only artist who has used the bundle, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t help her out enormously.
Sales have dropped for 99.9% of artists, but there’s still no denying that the US and the UK have lost interest in Madonna’s music. MDNA has only sold around 134,000 copies in the UK since 2012 so I doubt Rebel Heart would have had impressive sales even without a leak. In comparison Loved Me Back to Life by Celine Dion and Partners by Barbra Streisand have both sold over 300, 000 copies since they were released in 2013 and 2014. I’m not surprised that tickets for the Rebel Heart tour have been slow in Europe and North America.
I remember someone on here boasting that Madonna’s albums always hit #1 in the UK (Madonna, Erotica and Bedtime Stories didn’t). I bet they weren’t expecting a Sam Smith album that had been out nearly a year to beat Rebel Heart to the top spot. It doesn’t pay to be cocky.
EDIT:
I doubt Living for Love would have performed much better had the album not leaked. Madonna is no longer relevant on the singles chart. And I’m pretty sure Ghosttown didn’t leak, and that still flopped when it was released as the second single.
This is where it all ended up going wrong.
Madonna should've either done a Beyonce and released the whole album in December, or released Living For Love worldwide as a single in December. The hype of a new Madonna single getting released out of nowhere would've had the worlds media talking about it, generating attention to the song hence promoting the song.
This is why Ghosttown flopped so badly. When it was announced as the 2nd single, I'd guess that anyone who wanted the song already downloaded it back in December when it was first released as an instant grat.
What puzzles me is how Madonna's album leaked so easily yet Beyonce released an album with music videos for each track and nothing leaked. It was just released to iTunes and sold massively because of it.
The only way Rebel Heart will go gold is by shipments. It won't sell 100k for a while yet. Same goes for Kiss Me Once. Like I've said before, at least Kylie has a platinum album this decade like Celine and Barbra. The sales of Aphrodite make up for Kiss Me Once. What does Rebel Heart have? MDNA.
I will be here when Kylie's next release flops, I hope harder than Madonna's latest, and I can't wait to rub it in. Perhaps I too will start several threads a week on it
Please stop. Kylie's latest album flopped on its arse as well.
To be honest, I don't think the leak made much of a difference whatsoever.
Into the Blue by Kylie might not have been a big hit (it was at number 7 in the midweeks) but it still entered at number 12, so it's obvious a few people who watched The Voice bought the song. Other than The Voice Kylie didn't promote Into the Blue, she certainly didn't have a Brit Award performance (she didn't even perform on The Voice), headline news or an hour on Jonathan Ross to back her up. One thing that's never mentioned is iTunes deleted the single version of Into the Blue when it was at number 12, so the other version of the song had to climb from a lower position for the rest of the week. This is why it dropped from 7-12 on the singles chart.
Going back to my earlier point, Living For Love was added to iTunes as an instant grat the week of The Brit Awards.
I suspect a lot of people who had already pre-ordered the album got the track instantly when LFL was added to iTunes.
That's why the record label should have released LFL as a stand alone single, not add it to the album as an instant grat. Anyone who had already pre-ordered the album wouldn't have been able to buy the song seperately. A bit like that U2 album, they automatically got the song without doing anything.
Ghosttown was a mess too. All those remixes and I still don't think they bothered releasing a remixes EP. It's as if they had already given up on the whole album by that point.
The Abbey Road Sessions by Kylie peaked at #2 and has sold nearly 200k copies in the UK. MDNA peaked at #1 and has sold 134k copies.
Does that have anything to do with rebel heart or are you just trolling.
It leaked in December shortly before Christmas, so she released the album for pre-order on the iTunes on December 20, with six songs available immediately for download and then went back into the studio with Kanye West to change the other songs. The album wasn't due for release until March the 6th.
So in answer to your question no, RH would have done what it has done no more no less maybe #1 in the US and UK but even then she wasn't beaten by stiff competition. She's just reached the inevitable has a high charting album, big tour and then end of era. It comes to them all Springsteen, Prince, Houston, Collins etc. And one day it will happen to Switf, P!nk, Perry and then the new crop will be usherd in.