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Music

If Rihanna Can't Sell Albums, How The Hell Is Anyone Else Supposed To?

'Talk That Talk' sold less than 10,000 copies and still topped charts, marking the lowest weekly sales record of all time.

I have this new tradition. On Sunday mornings, I wake up between 9 or 10am, fuzzy and fucked from my 6am sleep time. On three hours of rest, I decide to get up and read. I can’t sleep when it’s bright out unless I wrap a t-shirt around my head and it’s too hot for that this summer.

First, I make coffee, turn the television on to see if there is any Kardashian entertainment happening and, while the coffee brews and Bruce Jenner gets his ears pierced, I choose a book. Two weekends ago, I chewed through Portia de Rossi’s Unbearable Lightness. Before that, it was Julia Wertz comics and old academic books I have forgotten about like Susan Bordo. Last Sunday, I re-read both of my Courtney Love biographies, Queen of Noise by Melissa Rossi (an unauthorized, scathing biography that paints her a gold-digging, opportunistic psychopath) and then Poppy Z. Brite’s Courtney Love. Of course, I skipped to the good parts. I know what I like when reading a book for the bazillionth time.

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Page 103 of Rossi’s book states this:

“A week after Hole’s album came out, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released with a modest 50,000 copies. Before long, it was selling 50,000 copies a day.”

50,000 copies. 50,000 copies. 50,000 copies per day.

Last week, The Independent published an article about something all of us are aware of: declining album sales. However, this piece confirmed that Rihanna’s 2011 album Talk That Talk marked an all-time low, selling only 9, 578 CDs and downloads combined this week and yet still coming out on top. “It is the lowest weekly sales recorded for a chart-topper since market research company Millward Brown began compiling data for the Official Charts Company in February of 1994.”

Doesn’t that seem really, really low? Under 10,000 units? Rihanna? 10,000 units for one week? They blamed the Olympics and this may be true, since the Spice Girls' Greatest Hits sales shot up after their performance last night. Gag.

Ever since Mediafire and its ugly cousin websites decided to tighten the purse strings and stop making it rain free music, it’s been slightly more difficult to get illegal downloads. You have to be on your game. You have to be, at the very least, a junior Internet troll. I have tricks, but I’m not getting my PhD in computer science or anything. Most of the time, I just give up too quickly and rip songs from Beemp3.com.

I have no problem getting Usher’s new album for free because I know he’s rich. It’s a total Robin Hood philosophy, and it’s pretty much selfish bullshit. I won’t steal from Hand Cream or The Men or Crazy Spirit, because these performers are in the same arena as I am. Usher isn’t in my arena (if he was, I’d try to fuck him); Usher actually plays real arenas.

What the hell does it mean if Rihanna only sells like 10,000 albums a week? For me, for my career, it means nothing. For Rihanna’s people, it means they are freaking the fuck out, which is crazy because who really cares about record sales anymore? In the last ten years, record sales have declined 76 percent, but vinyl sales have gone up 39 percent. Niche markets are rising. The little guys, relative to their mainstream successors, are rejoicing. I’m a little guy. It feels good to know people downloaded your album because they heard some blog say it was good, listened to it, fanned out, then came to the show and bought your LP. That’s how it works now. We’re going back to the old ways, perhaps.

So this week, Rihanna didn’t make enough dough to buy that diamond-crusted salvia pipe. Big deal. She will as soon as she goes on tour, because that’s how you make money these days: you go on tour. It’s a sad, sad life, guys.

Just kidding.

@myszkaway