Journals vs. Stars Dance
Okay so this post was highly requested and now is a time I feel like is the most appropriate to post it.
If you go on the Internet, or check sales, or just log on to twitter, during the past year, you were probably bound to read something “Journals is a flop!” along those lines. Now if you’re part of the Selenator fandom or you were unlucky to run into their tweets on your timeline, you probably saw a tweet saying “Stars Dance did so much better than Journals. Journals flopped!” or something along those lines.
I’ll be 100% unbiased as usual by stating facts and letting you grasp the obvious as best as I can.
Alright so here’s a rundown of Stars Dance.
It was Selena’s first album as a solo artist because she thought it was gonna be her last album since she wanted to focus on acting, but when that didn’t go so well, she decided to still make music. It debuted at number 1 selling 97,000 copies the first week. Yeah that was a pretty weak debut, but it was her best. You’d think she capitalize on the fact that no one else released that week or even the following week, but her team did the best they could do by having her have endless promo.
Promoting the album and singles at a fourth of July event….
another event
GMA
interviews
more performances
and one of the most important of all when it comes to promoting an album is… TOUR
Basically, no one could say that Selena was screwed over during her release for Stars Dance. Hollywood Records did a great thing for her during the release and even left out their other star, Demi Lovato, by giving Selena the 4th of July gig in order for her to sing a song about slowing it down while giving out applications rather than having Demi sing a patriotic song like Made in the USA. The album was not rush released and had two singles that were radio hits again, those two receiving endless promotion. Lets also not forget that Selena got her endless promo from Justin as well
Weather the album and its singles were promoted on daytime television, nighttime television, during interviews, award shows, radio stations, TOUR, or anything else your minds can think of, Stars Dance received every possible promo stunt any release could wish of. The album had a strong lead single with Come & Get It being Selena’s first top 10, yeah right after a reunion with Justin was that achieved, but hey a top 10 is a top 10! On the charts it won’t say how she got it or why and yeah Come & Get It was strong on radio thanks to paypal, but a radio hit is a radio hit. Now don’t get me wrong, promo is not a bad thing. It’s excellent. You have a team and their job is to promote you. That’s what they’re supposed to. So A+ for Stars Dance getting endless promo. Now since the whole world heard about it, it must of done amazing! Maybe it had a weak 97k debut because the promo Come & Get It got wasn’t enough, but the total album sales should be great since the promo that came after the release.
Wrong. Over a year later and the album didn’t even pass 400,000 and it’s not even close to passing it. With only one top 10 single and the other not even cracking the top 20 on Billboard, the album is still not gold a year and a half later. Neither song was #1 on iTunes.
So did the album do well? No. Yeah sure it got a #1 debut, but the debut didn’t even pass 100k in the first week. You could have bought the album anywhere. It wasn’t limited and if you wanted the hardcopy, you could have had the hardcopy over the digital download. So why did it flop? It had no reason to. But maybe it being a Selena Gomez album is enough reason for it to flop.
Up next, Journals.
Unlike Stars Dance, Journals was actually not a promoted album let alone did it have an official release. I would say that the album was treated as an EP, but even EPs had official releases. For those of you confused on what EP stands for, it just means extended play and usually has 3 or 5 new songs rather than 12. So Justin released 10 songs each week and it was called Music Mondays. After each song garnered success on iTunes, Justin then released Complete My Journals which had 5 more songs on it. The album was supposed to be released December 16, but then it was pushed to December 23. The only time Justin appeared at an event was for his movie Believe, but other than Twitter, Journals was not promoted anywhere else. The album’s sales were NOT reported to Nielsen Soundscan or anything else for that matter so the album could be at 500k right now or at 200k or even at 1million, but we will never know because it wasn’t even sent for it to get tracked. So if you’re wondering why it didn’t chart on the amount of charts Justin is used to charting on, is because it wasn’t reported. The album was also availible on iTunes only and wasn’t given to other digital retailers like Amazon. You could not buy a physical copy of Journals, because there isn’t one. You could only buy it digitally on iTunes. Also, the album was only available exclusively from December 23 to January 2nd. Basically it means that the album had a limited release. it was reported that it sold over 100,000 in the US during that first week. The lead single, Heartbreaker, hit #1 on iTunes and peaked at #13. All in all, I would not say that the album “flopped” or was it a success, but hey, you’re given what you’re given and then you capitalize on that. You can’t rush release something at the end of the year, do no appearances for it, not even release it physically, or even at any other outlets such as Target or Walmart or even Clair’s, and then wonder why the album didn’t shoot to platinum like Justin is used to.
It’s common sense. If you ask me, Journals already outsold Stars Dance or is close too. By October 2013, Stars Dance was at 228k so it was probably at 240k by the time Journals was released and Journals ended up selling 100k in the first week so basically it wasn’t too far away from outselling a 5 month old Stars Dance. Now Stars Dance is at 383k and it’s a year and four months old. Journals is 11 months old so if Selena can rack up another 100k, I’m pretty sure Justin can regardless of the fact that Journals had a limited release, no promo, and was only available digitally. So I estimate that Journals is around either 300k right now. Basically, it’s close to Stars Dance in sales and it was limited release and not promoted. If Selenators really wanted a fair comparison, they’d compare Believe and Stars Dance, but trust me, they don’t want a fair comparison especially since Believe was platinum a month after its release. Did Stars Dance scrape gold a YEAR after it’s release? No.
It’s just facts. But the fact that a limited release and unpromoted album can EVEN compete against an album like Stars Dance that had 375834 promo attempts from 284723 outlets and was available everywhere, just shows who really holds the power here.
And if I were Selenators, I wouldn’t run my mouth too much on Twitter claiming that Journals flopped when it could have outsold Stars Dance while I write this. Knowing their past would karma, I’d watch myself since they dragged Miley’s Can’t Be Tamed regardless of the album outselling their fave worldwide, but in the end, Miley came back with Bangerz and in a month of its release, it outsold a year and 4 month old Stars Dance and yes is now platinum. So watch it. Karma isn’t too nice when it comes to dealing with psychopaths.
Ta ta.
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The image post will probably be the end of the year post since it’s gonna be a big one and will be accompanied with a video. As for the upcoming posts, wait for it.