Article by: Kathleen Valones
Teenage Dream is other music stars' nightmare?
Katy Perry's sophomore album, Teenage Dream, is a resounding success. According to an article in Reuters, the album bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, thanks to first-week sales of 192,000 units in the United States, the ninth-best debut week so far this year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
However, the article went on to say that "Teenage Dreams" fell short in one key area: It didn't meet first-week sales projections by industry insiders. That is disappointing for an artist like Katy considering she has been quite visible everywhere. Her sales figures has sparked worries that the album's performance may affect retail orders for other superstar releases due later this year. In effect, this triggered discussions on whether labels should even consider shipping 1 million units before street date.
Hopes are high though that the album will shoot up in sales towards the end of the year. Some label executives note that most female pop artists commonly sell a lot of track downloads but don't enjoy big debut-week album sales. For instance, when Fergie came out with "The Duchess" in September 2006, it sold only about 160,000 units during her first week. It was in December of the same year that "fans started buying her like an album artist."
It's interesting to note that female pop artist don't commonly have big debut week album sales. Why is that? And what's not to like about the single "Teenage Dream," by the way? It's the type of song that you can crank up on your car speakers and just drown! Check out her performance live at Letterman:
