Alpocalypse Chart Watch & Speculation

[crazygurl14]

Only if the itunes comedy chart really mattered towards anything.... He is number 17

[Killingsworth]

Last time I checked, he was number 13.

[Orthography Enthusiast]

Last time I checked, he was number 13.

Well, good, because 14 is a stupid number.

[crazygurl14]

Well he must have had a small bump. Only if that could happen in the other areas

[anthontherun]

Just FYI, if you don't have a copy yet or wanna give the gift of Alpocalypse this holiday season, Amazon will have the deluxe edition for just $8.99 on Monday, November 28. The catch? It's only from 5-7 a.m. PST.

(Also, if someone wants to buy me any of the Queen box sets or the deluxe version of my usernamesake Band on the Run, be sure to note the times those will be on sale)

[Teh Dingo]

Seemed like the best place to post this.

Lonely Island's new album debuted at #10 with less than 30,000 copies sold.

For those who REALLY FEEL STRONGLY that they're killing Al and are in direct competition with him, that's a far bigger dropoff in first week sales between albums than SOL to Alpocalypse - and Al had the higher chart position with the lower sales on top of that)

As I said to the WOWAY members who were on the ledge over the success of Lonely Island's last album and what it means to Al , Billboard first week sales depend just as much on luck of the draw as they do an artist's popularity. An album that comes out in a slow week with barely any competition will have much more room in the marketplace than an album that comes out in a week of big new releases (Black Sabbath) while month old albums are still selling well (Daft Punk). Watching Billboard charts is fun (I get into it during new album season), but it's not the end all, be all that it's made out to be sometimes.

So if there's any bigger sign of "We're living in a golden age of mainstream comedy music and Al's a fan of Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D etc. and let's just leave it at that", this should be it There's enough space on the comedy shelf for all (Do albums come on shelves anymore? Are they still called albums? Get off my lawn you darn kids)

[Killingsworth]

I've always felt that comparing Al to the Lonely Island, Tenacious D, Flight of the Conchords etc. was basically just like apples and oranges. While they all do "funny" music, they all have drastically different approaches to the "funny" part.

[anthontherun]

Well, I think there's one critical fact you're overlooking that could explain the massive sales drop for The Lonely Island (whose last disc sold more than twice as many copies its first week): Andy Samberg is no longer on SNL. That was their top promotional venue and without it, they really don't have any buzz outside of comedy sites. Six songs from the last album aired as digital shorts on SNL; just two from The Wack Album did...and one of those aired (and was released on iTunes) two years ago.

I'm saying this as a Lonely Island fan (though I admittedly didn't buy The Wack Album yet), so it's not like I'm meaning to tear them down or raise Al up. But without the benefit of the SNL exposure, their songs and style just aren't universally appealing enough to get people interested. The very nature of Al's work pretty much guarantees that he won't face the same problem.

[Killingsworth]

I'm starting to think The Lonely Island might try some different stuff with this album. Since they aren't on SNL anymore, that means they don't have to make sure their music videos conform to network standards and that might give them more freedom to try things they weren't really able to before.

[anthontherun]

They did do the "Wack Wednesday" videos building up to the release but I never saw those mentioned anywhere other than Splitsider, whose readers probably pretty much in tune with The Lonely Island already.