On the surface, Kylie Minogue's 'X' album has been met with a resounding 'who care's' attitude by the American fans.
After a week of major promo including an appearance on the Today Show and a guest role on Dancing With The Stars, 'X' only managed to sell 5,588 units and debuted at no. 139.5,588 by US standards isn't much. The number one album in the USA sold around 167,000 units last week. Mind you, this week in Australia Kylie would have had a number one album on that figure.
So did the US fans really give the 'X' album the thumbs down or did the delay for the US release mean that Australia serviced the world?
While major labels struggle to come to terms with a global market, the audience couldn't care less. A fan is a fan is a fan and with technology and accessibility, the true fan is not prepared to wait for 6 months for a major label to "set-up the campaign" to market a release.
*November is too competitive a time to release an album in the USA unless your profile is in Celine Dion type league", Fiona Roberts of Rocket Exports tells Undercover News. "Not sure why 'X' was not released in late January in the US. It might have worked better for her with a shorter delay. We find our customer will limit their imports, if the US domestic version is not too far off".
With Australian retail sites such as sanity.com.au accessible from anywhere in the world, access to any iTunes a matter of just having the right credit card, and the industry that has been built by companies such as Rocket Exports in Australia, it is no wonder Kylie's local US release was stiffed as a local US release. The core fanbase had already bought it ... months ago.
In the case of Kylie, the earlier release in Europe and price to export from that region made it an attractive import for US retail. "We had price competition from Europe," she says. "'X' was released in Europe at the same time as Australia and Europe can manufacture much cheaper because of volume. Our feeback was that the sales for the European edition to the USA was huge. Our USA customers source their European product from all over the territory...Norway, Germany, Holland, Sweden and the UK mostly. So it would be difficult to ascertain what the full European impact on the USA sales were".
Silverchair suffered the same fate. The 'Straight Lines' album stayed ay number one in Australia for weeks, because those Australian sales were also servicing the world. "Of course, we are not the only Music Exporter in Australia, but the industry here can be very insular and timid at times about Export and forget the sales potential. More importantly, they don't see that other territories will gladly have the business, if we don't want it, which is only Australia's loss," she said.
In Silverchair's case, their shows in the USA are often sell-outs. Those fans were around to support the live gigs. Why not the album? Maybe they already did. Maybe the real fans couldn't wait for a local release and bought the Australian pressings.
Neither Kylie nor Silverchair should accept the tag of "the US flop". Both albums have done fine. The only failure was with the US labels being too slow to release them locally and the fanbase being too impatient to wait.
