Whitechapel guitar player
Alex Wade took to Twitter this afternoon to explain why first-week sales are so important for bands of Whitechapel's relative size.
Alright I'm going to go on a Randy Blythe style rant and it will be the only time I do it, so sorry in advance.
The reason why bands hound their fans to buy their CD the first week it comes out is not because of money, it's for the numbers.
No bands make money off of CD sales these days, it's not a source of income like it used to be for older bands. Bands like us make income to keep our band going through touring. The music business deems a bands worth by album sales, the more albums they sell, the more people that like them, it's not rocket science. For whatever reason, someone deemed it that whatever a band sales in the first week is what's most important, so that's why bands want you to buy their album in the first week it is out.
I don't want you to buy our CD because it's going to make me rich, far from it. I want you to buy it because the more albums we sell, the betters tours and opportunities we will get to play shows for you, our fans. So please, if you have the intention of buying our CD, skip a shitty fast food meal this week and use that $10 to pick up a copy to help our career, not our wallets. Thank you!
Glad you guys support that rant, I was afraid I'd bum people out clogging up their timeline but I felt like most fans/people didn't know.
Everything Wade says here is true. This kind of thing obviously isn't of great concern for Radiohead or Metallica, but for independent touring bands that sell anywhere from 1,000 to 30,000 copies of their album in its debut week, first-week numbers are of huge importance. So if you like Whitechapel, buy their fucking CD.
[Yes, that should say "fast food," not "fast foot," haha - editor]
