Deseree Stukes ([email protected])
Tue, 3 Nov 1998 16:35:02 -0500
New on the shelves today are:
-- Alanis Morissette's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" (the much
anticipated follow-up to the 31-million-selling Jagged Little Pill), of
which Warner Music Canada shipped 450,000 units
-- U2's "The Best Of 1980-1990", which shipped 175,000 units, and comes
with a limited edition B-sides album
-- Celine Dion's Christmas album, "These Are Special Times," of which
Sony Music Canada shipped out a whopping 700,000 units
-- Beck's low-key "Mutations", which Universal reports shipped just over
gold (50,000)
-- The Rolling Stones' "No Security", for which figures weren't offered
by Virgin Music Canada because live albums generally aren't huge
sellers.
In Toronto, the downtown core was bustling, as fans lined up around the
corner to get into Sam The Record Man's anchor store on Yonge Street.
Store manager Chris Sullivan says Morissette and U2 were the main
sellers. "Most people were buying both. We sold about 320 Alanis and
about 300 U2."
Sullivan said he had ordered 3,000 copies of the U2 and 2,000 of the
Morissette, "but on Alanis, we have a warehouse just around the corner
and we have 10,000 there," he said.
He ordered more U2, he adds, because the two-CD set is a limited
edition. The single-disc greatest hits CD comes out next Tuesday.
Steve Kane, senior VP of Mercury Records Canada, reports similarly
buoyant sales for the U2 release across the country, with Calgary and
Waterloo, Ont., doing especially brisk business.
Meanwhile, Lorie Slater, general manager of HMV's Toronto Superstore on
Yonge Street, midnight sales were "fantastic", with well over 500 people
in the store. "The surprise was that U2 slaughtered Alanis in terms of
sales," she says, selling more than 500 copies. "Alanis sold not even a
fifth of that."
Part of that discrepancy, however, can be attributed to the fact that
HMV had in place a special promotion that allowed any purchaser of the
greatest-hits collection to buy any other album from U2's extensive
catalogue for half-price.
The store also held a contest to win a limited-edition box of U2 vinyl
singles and the band's complete catalogue. HMV even blared out an
announcement of the release from speakers on the roof of the HMV store.
"The cops closed it down in 10 minutes," Slater laughs.
Down the block at Tower Records' Toronto outlet, store manager Mark Ryan
reports no line-up but says there was a bit of a rush from customers
trying to find the product. He says U2 outsold Morissette by "about
3:1".
When asked if Morissette sold at least 100 copies, he said "not at all."
That might have had something to do with the price point: $16.99.
By comparison, Sam's stores in Montreal, Halifax, Vancouver, Edmonton
and Toronto were selling "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" for the
loss-leader price of $11.03. It went up to $14.99 on Tuesday.
At the Virgin Megastore in Vancouver -- where, quips store manager Craig
Duncan, "we don't line up; it's pretty casual on the West coast" --
there was no advertising to let people know the store would extend their
hours past midnight. They simply allowed people to buy the new releases
when the clock struck 12. The results? U2 won out by about 2:1.
"We did 47 U2, 25 Alanis, two copies of Celine, five Stones, and one
Beck," Duncan said.
At Sam's in Montreal, Dion's native turf, manager Cathryn Maxwell kept
the store open for an hour past midnight. Not in a position to give out
numbers, she would reveal only that there was a small a line-up and that
U2 came out ahead, with Morissette second and Beck third.
In Halifax, Sam's on Barrington buyer Andy McDaniel characterized
midnight action in the store as "pretty dead" and sales as "sad". One of
the sales people tells him he sold one Beck and 20 Morissette. "There
was only about 400 bucks worth of sales, so it doesn't leave much left
over."
Despite the early results, midnight sales are not necessarily a
barometer of longer term sales. Morissette's younger fans might well be
less inclined to be out at midnight than U2's constituency, while older
supporters of Dion would also not be as predisposed to stand in line in
the late-night cold. <<...>>
des
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