OK GO Web Buzz Does Not Translate into Significant Record Sales
Posted September 8, 2006 — in Music News
- The “A Million Ways” video featured on VH1’s “Best Week Ever”
- online views top 1 million.
- Ok Go performs on “Good Morning America”.
- “A Million Ways” tops MTVu’s countdown show “The Dean’s List.” Anyone seeing the signals yet?
- video has been streamed more than 3 million times.
- The band performs on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” then on DirecTV’s CDUSA the next day
- In its first week online, the “Here It Goes Again” video was streamed more than 1 million times; by late August, it had been viewed more than 3 million times.
We kept saying: ‘All signs point to the hit,”‘ Kitman says. “But there were questions: Do people love the song, or do they really just love the video? Do they even know it’s a band? We never really knew.”
The video has not resulted in meaningful sales for either the album or the single — even in markets like Boston where the song is getting spins.
What does this all mean? it means that a band with a gimmick with a mediocre song can’t sell alot of records. Right??
Toured with these guys for a while about a year and a half ago, and I have to say they are one of the best live bands touring the club circuit right now. They can make a career out of that alone. As far as the new album goes, I definitely like them better live (seems like the rest of the country kinda feels the same), but its really not a mediocre album. Some seriously good stuff on there, and worth a good listen. And if OK GO ever comes anywhere near you, go see them. It’ll be worth your time.
Comment by Danny — September 8, 2006 @ 11:25 am
Attention on YouTube doesn’t translate to many sales. It did get them onto the MTV VMAs, which almost doubled sales from the previous week (a fact that isn’t mentioned in the article even though it’s dated one day after that week’s sales numbers were reported).
Not only that, it’s the #9 digital album in the country, which wasn’t mentioned in the article, either. Here’s a fascinating fact: Over half of last week’s sales of Oh No were digital. What’s that tell me? Maybe that Capitol didn’t have enough CDs out there at retail.
YouTube views don’t mean a whole lot. Why? All kinds of people are watching it, and it takes so little time and investment to wactch a bit of a YouTube video. A band needs to reach likely music consumers and the type of people who will get off their butts and go see a live show. YouTube gets some of those people and a LOT of people who are not likely to buy a CD, a track or a concert ticket.
But what if you look at this in a return-on-investment context? They spent a few bucks on a video and have done more with it that an expensive video and a retail marketing campaign would have done. It’s not like OK Go broke the bank and was going for a home run. They made something out of nothing.
Comment by Glenn — September 8, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
Last week the album was #2 at iTunes. That means something.
Comment by JohnnyL — September 9, 2006 @ 12:38 pm