Monday, November 12, 2018

Fake numbers

I have been talking about numbers and that they really don't mean anything. Well here is a proof of both sides. I got this from a friend (no it has to do with ticket sales not that metal sucks).

http://www.metalsucks.net/2018/11/09/l-a-band-threatin-faked-a-fanbase-to-land-a-european-tour-no-one-attended/

In this case, people probably think of the clubs that they lose money, at the same time I'm more baffled that the booking person on the clubs really can't read numbers. Second that they care about numbers at all. It's a fact they went on numbers and never checked them.

On the same hand, this is nothing really new and the club people should know better. The numbers can be blown up, and most times are. When I worked around Major Lazer that was an issue. They were at the time the most streamed band in the world. And yet they could only sell 800 tickets in Stockholm ( this is at least 6 months after Lean On). Major Lazer though didn't lie about it, but I heard many bookers in a panic that they had guessed the band should sell out an arena for 16 000 people at least.

The next thing like that is Chainsmokers. Same here the organizers thought they would draw around 10 000 people, in reality, they just draw around 1000. A band that has 5 266 882969 streams and with a 3306 3633 monthly listeners on Spotify alone should do better. Of course, they cheat, or the record label does.

Let's make a comparison with Rammstein who plays in Stockholm next summer and sold out Stockholm stadium in one day 32 000 people in capacity. 441 882070 they have 33 10267 monthly listeners. That is 30 million less than Chainsmokers.
But when it comes to the real ticket sales Rammstein sold 31 000 more live tickets then Chainsmokers in Stockholm, and they sold out, Chainsmokers couldn't even do that.

The bigger booking agents I speak to have stopped looking into these numbers. Most record labels look at numbers but also understand how to read them (except for old people on certain labels that still think that the numbers count).
And yes when I get back from people that a certain artist doesn't have the numbers I usually just blacklist that person for being an idiot.

The real idiots here are the clubs, the artist yes but he has just used some of the stupid tactics that the industry in general use, but then did it a bit too big. Still, the clubs should have done their homework and just asked if the numbers could be even real. And second just check if these pre-sales are real. A good alarm clock would be 43 monthly listeners and most of the songs under a 1000 listings on an album released last year on Spotify should make you think twice. I guess greed is what it is.

I guess though that Threatin has their fifteen minutes of fame. The story is like a wildfire and people will check out his music. So in PR standpoint "All PR is good PR". I can tell that yesterday he had 43 monthly listeners on Spotify, today he has 1846 and the first song has jumped a thousand listings. And if the algorithms on Spotify is correct they will start to add him to playlists since the name is mention online so many times.

I was in meetings yesterday and numbers were discussed but in very broad forms. Right now is welcome to the digital side number two, leave the internet.

You will never break with numbers and don't ever try to boost them in a fake way.
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A month later, wen this post gets on our newsletter I just checked Thretins numbers on Spotify. Today he has 11000 monthly listeners and the top song has 15 000 streams and most the others has a couple of thousand. Yes, even bad PR is good PR.



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