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Megadeth’s Super Collider Projected to sell 10-14,000 Copies Less Than Th1rt3en in its First Week of Release

  • Axl Rosenberg
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MUSTAINE BILLBOARD

Of course, sales figures are never an indication of artistic merit… but schadenfreude is still a wonderful thing, especially when you’re dealing with an asshole like Dave Mustaine.

And so:

It’s no secret that Mustaine was unhappy with the sales figures for the releases Megadeth made during their time with Roadrunner Records, and that he blamed Roadrunner for these perceived low sales despite the fact that the label did just about everything they could to promote the albums. The bottom line is that Mustaine is out of touch with the current state of the music industry, and refuses to take the blame for anything ever.

But if we pretend, for the sake argument, that Mustaine’s logic was sound, and that it really was all Roadrunner’s fault that the albums didn’t sell whatever figure Mustaine wanted them to sell, then now that he has his own label there should be nothing but smooth sailing from here on out, right? I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, he was gloating about how Universal, the distributor for his Tradecraft imprint, was spending more money on him than Roadrunner ever did:

“That’s what I one of the things I love about Universal is, they spent more money on our first photo shoot than almost all the videos that Roadrunner did. One photo shoot! Our last video we did for Roadrunner was one sixth of the money that they spent on our photo shoot. It just shows you how out of place we were there. At the time, though, you figure going back several years, heavy metal was not popular in America. It was about, you’ve gotta be Tayor Swift or you’ve gotta… First off, we were never really in this to be the most popular band in the world. We play this music, ’cause we love this music.”

That statement is all kinds of stupid, because a) Mustaine and Tradecraft are now probably in the hole to Universal for whatever Universal spent on that photo shoot, b) I know Roadrunner ain’t what it used to be but Taylor Swift???, c) if he doesn’t care about being “the most popular band in the world,” then he shouldn’t give two shits about how much money is being spent to promote him (especially since, relatively speaking, his sales figures are GREAT), and d) throwing money at a problem does not always solve that problem.

And case in point: while Th1rt3en sold 42,000 copies in its first week of release back in 2011, Super Collider, the band’s latest, is on track to do 28-32k. That means that somewhere in the ballpark of one-quarter to one-third of the people who bought Th1rt3en in its first week of release will not do the same for Super Collider.

It’s impossible to know why the drop occurred, and it could very easily just be the way things are in the biz right now. Except there was only a six-percent drop in the first week sales of Th1rt3en as compared to Endgame (45,000 vs. 42,000), and even the drop from United Abominations to Endgame was only sixteen percent. And those were all Roadrunner releases.

The truth is, the lower-than-would-please-Mustaine sales figures are probably the result of the state of the music industry and the fact that Mustaine has been making an ass out of himself for the past couple of years and the fact that Super Collider arrived with horrible buzz. (I’d apologize for my part in that horrible buzz, but seriously, have you heard this album? It’s so bad I saw flies buzzing around the copies at Best Buy.) It was really a perfect storm of circumstances that weren’t gonna be great for sales.

Except for this: HOLY SHIT, DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY METAL BANDS WOULD KILL THEIR MOTHERS TO SELL 28,000 RECORDS EVER, LET ALONE IN THEIR FIRST WEEK OF RELEASE?!?! I mean, Anvil’s new album sold 740 copies in its first week — about two percent of what Super Collider will do. Okay okay okay, so Super Collider puts Megadeth on par with Anthrax for the first time (Worship Music did 28,000 in its first week, and that was considered a huge win for ‘Thrax), but it’s not like the sky is falling. Really, the only person who’s gonna be pissed about these numbers is Dave Mustaine. I wonder who he’ll blame this time?

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