Neilstein Soundscam: Black Out All Other Bands
As a reminder, you can get a more complete picture of sales figures at Metal Insider this week and every week.
Here are this week’s Neilstein Power Rankings.
1. ↔ Clutch / Peak: 1 / Last Week: 1 / Weeks On: 5
Albums sold: 6,825 (Earth Rocker, second week)
Facebook: 194765 likes · 15273 talking about this (7.8%)
YouTube: 107,000 (“Earth Rocker” lyric video)
Social activity rose from 6.1% to 7.8%, meaning fans still care about the band post-album release. Band is on tour right now so expect the buzz to stay strong.
2. ↔ Ghost / Peak: 2 / Last Week: 2 / Weeks On: 4
Albums sold: 0 (Infestissumam, April 16)
Facebook: 98,770 likes · 8,920 talking about this (9.0%)
YouTube: 551,000 (“Secular Haze” official video); 39,000 (“Year Zero,” official video [censored version])
Ghost more than doubled their Facebook activity percentage in one week’s time, finally catching the social network bug. “Secular Haze” video gained 100k more views, but “Year Zero” was yanked in favor of a censored version so the stats for that one aren’t a great overall indicator.
3. ↑ Sevendust / Peak: 3 / Last Week: 9 / Weeks On: 2
Albums sold: 27,425 (Black Out the Sun, debut)
Facebook: 526925 likes · 34811 talking about this (6.6%)
YouTube: 46,000 (“Decay” official video)
Social activity percentage doubled, YouTube is up from 14,000 last week and that is a MONSTROUS sales number. Kind of amazing how relevant Sevendust still are.
4. ↔ Kvelertak / Peak: 3 / Last Week: 4 / Weeks On: 9
Albums sold: 1,750 (Meir, debut)
Facebook: 63498 likes · 4763 talking about this (7.5%)
YouTube: 61,000 (“Manelyst” official video)
Fell significantly short of my first week sales projections. Common wisdom is that RR signed this band to re-establish metal cred and didn’t mind taking a hit on the money for that, but will they be satisfied with less than 2,000 first week? Social buzz is still solid (down from nearly 10% last week) and the “Manelyst” video is chugging along with 11k new views.
5. ↓ Intronaut / Peak: 3 / Last Week: 3 / Weeks On: 3
Albums sold: 680 (Habitual Levitations, second week)
Facebook: 26549 likes · 2266 talking about this (8.5%)
YouTube: 37,500 views (“Milk Leg” official video)
Sales are down a lot, FB percentage is down a bit, YouTube is up by a margin (7k). Band still has steam built up from the new record but it’s fading. They need to tour again.
6. ↔ The Ocean / Peak: 6 / Last Week: 6 / Weeks On: 2
Albums sold: 0 (Pelagial, out April 30)
Facebook: 23,792 likes · 2,248 talking about this (9.4%)
YouTube: 25,000 (“Bathyalpelagic II” official video)
Steady Freddy for The Ocean.
7. Suicidal Tendencies / Peak: 7 / Last Week: n/a / Weeks On: 1
Albums sold: 3,250 (13, debut)
Facebook: 210,463 likes · 5,071 talking about this (2.4%)
YouTube: 77,000 (“Cyco STyle” official video)
I wouldn’t read into that low FB percentage too much; the band’s fan-base is old. But, in addition to the solid sales figures, Mike Muir got a media bump from the announcement that Infectious Grooves will reunite to play Metallica’s Orion + More Festival.
8. ↑ Killswitch Engage / Peak: 8 / Last Week: 10 / Weeks On: 2
Albums sold: 0 (Disarm the Descent, out April 2)
Facebook: 2021245 likes · 43736 (2.1%)
Soundcloud: ~54,000 (Full album stream)
Social activity is up 0.3% but it’s still really low; wonder why? Album dropped this week and I expect it post a huge first week number.
9. Shining / Peak: 9 / Last Week: n/a / Weeks On: 1
Albums sold: 0 (One One One, out April 23)
Facebook: 12,165 likes · 1,129 talking about this (9%)
YouTube: Nothing!
The album is out today in Norway but will be released April 23rd in the U.S. by Prosthetic; that makes the “albums sold” category a bit weird in this case since we’ve been hyping this release all week. The Prosthetic deal should mean much more media exposure in the U.S., which is a good thing.
10. Fallujah / Peak: 10 / Last Week: n/a / Weeks On: 1
Albums sold: No data available (Nomadic, out now)
Facebook: 29,719 likes · 1,776 talking about this (5.9%)
YouTube: 52,000 (“The Dead Sea” song premiere)
Why not? Band deserves it. Their label is giving them absolutely zero support (every email we’ve gotten about the EP has been from the band directly) and they’re killing it anyway and winning tons of critical praise in the process. Kudos.
