My thoughts on Billboard Album Sales and more

There has been a lot of discussion lately by Hilary fans debating the first week sales numbers of Dignity, and whether the album will be considered a success. As you might have heard, Dignity debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 selling around 140,000 copies. This is down from the 200,000 mark that all three of Hilary's previous albums approached.

There are many explanations as to why Dignity sold less. The first is that people just don't buy CD's anymore. Album sales are down overall because of online downloading, so it's probably unreasonable to expect to sell as much as in previous years.

The second biggest thing that held Dignity back is the fact that Hilary's fanbase is changing. Many of Hilary's fans that were pre-teens when Metamorphosis came out have gotten tired of Hilary and are no longer fans. Potential fans who are currently pre-teens now have other idols to look up to like Miley Cyrus. Hilary is caught in this weird space where she's too old for the tween audience, but too young for the adult audience. Don't get me wrong, Hilary still has a huge loyal fanbase - but I just don't think it is as strong as it once was.

People have criticized the promotion of the album, saying that Hollywood Records didn't do enough. Personally I think the album was promoted pretty well. Everything seemed to be set up nicely to have a successful debut. There's only so much the record label can do, at some point people just have to want to go out and buy the album. The one area where the promotion could have maybe been better was with the younger audience. People are saying that there was no buzz about the album on Disney TV and Radio.

No matter what the first week numbers looked like, we still have a long way to go. If Dignity can hang around the top end of the chart for a few weeks that would go a long way to establishing this CD as a success. With the big tour coming up this summer, and a few new singles on the way, things still look good for Dignity sales over the long term.

Unfortunately I have a really bad feeling about the next couple of weeks. Many optimistic Hilary fans are predicting that Dignity will actually improve on the chart next week and possibly go to #1 or 2. I hate to break the bad news, but that's just not going to happen. I would love to be wrong on this, but Dignity sales will most likely drop 50% next week, and will be lucky to be in the top 10. I know that sounds bad, but I'm just trying to be realistic.

Although Dignity's opening week number was lower than most people hoped for, it's still pretty good. If Hilary can open every CD in the top 5 for the rest of her career, she'll be making music for a very long time. And that's the most important thing.

Tags: Hilary Duff, Dignity, Billboard, Album, Sales