Industry Insiders Label Kanye’s First Week Sales for ‘Yeezus’ as a Failure

By: Amanda Anderson-Niles

More Yeezus album sales news. Kanye West just dropped his latest studio album “Yeezus” last week and the rapper took a very different, yet dramatic approach to promote his new music. Not only does the album not have a real album cover, but the album also does not have a lead single. In fact, Kanye did debut a few of the album’s tracks in a very outrageous marketing campaign that featured him beaming his head on numerous building throughout the country, but of course the extreme marketing campaign didn’t go on without a hitch.

In the end, Kanye would sell 328,000 copies of “Yeezus” in its first week, a number drastically smaller than the original projections that declared he would sell about 500,000 copies. While the numbers are still very impressive for an album release in a society that doesn’t buy albums in large numbers anymore, they say industry insiders are still claiming “Yeezus” first week sales are a failure. And they are making the bold claim because it’s clear certain artists like Justin Timberlake have overcome the economy and they expected a very popular artist like Kanye who spent millions to market his new music to pull way bigger numbers. A.V. Club reports:

Surprising almost no one, Kanye West’s Yeezus has landed atop this week’s Billboard album sales chart. Still, with “only” 328,000 copies sold, some industry insiders are calling the album’s first week a failure, comparing Yeezus’ totals to the 339,000 copies Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories moved in its first week. While Kanye West probably doesn’t give a f*ck what anyone who’s not him thinks (and where is that damn croissant?), Buzzfeed has a good defense of West’s sales, noting that Yeezus started at a disadvantage for a few reasons including, but not limited to, the lack of a hit advance single, proper presale, or even real album art.

 

 

Antimusic also reports “Yeezus” was Kanye’s worst opening sales week to date:

But despite a leak that diminished original expectations of around 500,000, Yeezus maintained the top spot, becoming West’s fifth solo No. 1 and sixth overall, counting his 2011 collaboration with Jay-Z, Watch the Throne.

However, Yeezus marks a continuing downward trend of sales for Kanye. It’s his first album to sell less than 400,000 in its opening week, and lowest first-week bow since debut album The College Dropout moved 441,000, according to Billboard.

 

 

Despite “Yeezus” not selling 500,000 copies in its first week, the album’s first week sales is the third largest for 2013. Kanye has already said he has no regrets for approaching this album the way he did, and he seems to take pride in releasing an album with no official single and album artwork.

But what say you? Do you think Kanye should have sold more albums in the first week or are the numbers good enough?