Grizzly Bear’s Nice Pricing Pays Off

noah | June 3, 2009 2:00 pm
veckatimest200
I haven’t reported much on the album charts lately, because, frankly, “another sucky week of sucky sales” isn’t really
news, and really there needs to be a move toward a better way of gauging popular interest in music, if only because actually going out to buy an album is an experience that fewer and fewer people are even able to engage in, let along want to. But the news that Grizzly Bear’s much-hyped, long-ago-leaked Veckatimest had landed in the top 10 this week is notable, if only because of a note buried in this week’s Billboard story running down the mag’s top albums:

Indie rock band Grizzly Bear is having its best week ever as its third full-length studio set, “Veckatimest,” arrives at No. 8 with 33,000. That’s the first album to chart on the Billboard 200 for the Massachusetts band and it also gives the quartet its best sales week. 40% of its sales came from downloads while another 24% were shifted at independent and small chain stores.

So, 40% of its sales–roughly 13,000 of them–came from downloads… and conveniently, Veckatimest was a mere $3.99 at Amazon MP3 last week. Now, the Top Digital Albums chart doesn’t break out data by store, and as anyone who glances at the Internet knows, the album was given kudos in almost every quarter of the Internet that fancies itself a place where “important” music gets discussed. But given that similarly lauded bands have seen monetary resistance to their recorded efforts, isn’t Amazon’s low price point at least worth noting? Especially as people figure out how to finance records that, like Veckatimest, took a notable effort to put together, that probably won’t be on the ever-shrinking music-centric shelves at Wal-Mart (although hey, if it is, kudos to whatever distributor hooked that up), and that can’t be paid for by just simply “making it back on the road”? Eminem Stays Atop Billboard 200; Grizzly Bear, Manson Debut Top 10 [Billboard]

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