Predicting “The Suburbs”

After my Soundscan article today, I got a question on Twitter from my friend Merideth. She posted:

curious about your arcade fire predictions if there is/isn’t a leak

Well, first of all, of course there will be a leak. Maybe it won’t come until the week before release, but it’s inevitable. The only album in recent memory that didn’t leak was Sleigh Bells and that was because there was no physical edition in the manufacturing chain to get out there. It was released digitally far in advance of the physical cd and all advances were streaming watermarks. It made it through that process unscathed but was all over the torrent sites within a few hours of it hitting iTunes.

Arcade Fire are in an interesting spot. In 2004, Funeral never made it higher than #131 on the Billboard charts, but went on to sell over 460,000 copies in the US. When Neon Bible was released in 2007, it debuted at #2, but didn’t quite match the success of Funeral. It ended up with sales of over 420,000 copies (which, when you consider how much changed in the industry even in those 3 years, is a very strong hold).

Now, we’re 3 years later and there is still an incredible excitement for this band, but maybe slightly less so than before. After all, 4 of the album’s 16 tracks have surfaced in advance of its August 3rd release date and many people seem to be underwhelmed. That isn’t to say that people don’t love them, but I’m sensing a more lukewarm reaction so far.

First week sales on Neon Bible were 92k (with an initial ship to retail of 220k). I think that they could actually top that this time around as far as the debut week goes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them eclipse 100k in week one. The test will be if it can approach the overall sales level of the previous two albums. In this climate, if they get over 350k, I don’t see how it can be disappointing. I’m rooting for them to go gold with this album, but it seems unlikely that they’ll top Funeral at this point in terms of US sales.

On a related note, Arcade Fire are donating $1 from every ticket sold on their upcoming tour to Partners In Health. You can visit www.pih.org to learn more.

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