August 11th, 2006
Independent Sales Supplement
Thanks to a good friend, I bring you another volume of the Independent Sales Supplement. This time, I wanted to take a look at some of punk’s most influential records. The numbers are pretty mind-numbing considering lesser bands sell double and triple the amount these legendary records have sold. take a look:
Operation Ivy “Energy” 427,310 scanned total, 3,957 scanned in 2006
Minor Threat “Discography” 229,009 scanned total, 7,241 scanned in 2006
Bad Religion “Suffer” 173,566 scanned total, 4,412 scanned in 2006
Dead Kenneys “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death” 140,654 scanned total, 10,319 scanned in 2006
Fugazi “Repeater” 133,363 scanned total, 4,388 scanned in 2006
Black Flag “Damaged” 125,635 scanned total, 8,033 scanned in 2006
Descendents “Milo Goes to College” 54,260 scanned total, 2,168 scanned in 2006
Circle Jerks “Group Sex” 43,002 scanned total, 2,593 scanned in 2006
Gorilla Biscuits “Start Today” 39,746 scanned total, 1,574 scanned in 2006
Kind of Intersting - I found a number of things interesting. Let’s start with Operation Ivy who has gone Gold with Energy, but the album has actually scanned less than 500,000, the mark of gold status. The sales though are well beyond half a million and they go off of shipped numbers. Also note the low number of sales in 2006, this has all to do with the fact that the record was pulled from Lookout earlier this year.
I should note that for many of these recods, the sales are well beyond the scanned numbers. Understand that in the 90’s so many more records were sold in indie stores than are now and I am sure many of those stores did not report to soundscan.
Some other things that are intertesting are the low numbers that the Descendents and Gorilla Biscuits have sold. i would have thought those numbers to be much much higher. Also, out of the pack of records, Dead Kennedys have sold more this year than all of the other influential records. I wonder if the other labels are not doing their part to re-introduce these classics to newer music fans. All should be required listening for any punk/hardcore fan.
The last thing I find interesting is that between Minor Threat sales and Fugazi sales, Ian Mackeye has to be a multi-millionaire. Wrap your head around that notion. Could you ever imagine Ian having that kind of money? Wow!
Someone wanted to know the scans of the Appleseed Cast Record on Tiger Style, here you go:
Appleseed Cast “Two Conversations” 15,582 scanned total, 1,780 scanned in 2006
Written by Virgil Dickerson
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On August 11th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
jason said:
any word on Lawrence Arms or Converge sales figures? keep up the great work, this is a great feature.
On August 11th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Joshua said:
Thanks for the Appleseed Cast numbers Virgil, that was me. I guess that’s close to what I thought they would do, one of my favorite records of the past 5 years. While a lot of the punk numbers you listed are lower then some may think I’m suprised by Suffer’s numbers not being higher.
On August 12th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Jordan Pastepunk said:
You gotta remember that Suffer sold well over 100,000 far before it began officially scanning any numbers. If you read about the history of Epitaph, you’ll learn that pretty much all of the Bad Religion releases before the band signed to Atlantic were hitting six figure sales with ease, and the band was in some sense growing too big for the label to handle. I’d be curious to hear from Epitaph its in-total sales numbers for all of the BR, NOFX and Pennywise releases, both pre-and-post soundscan.