I don’t know anyone who owns it,
I work with people, alot of them, I talk with kids, teens about music, I listen to pop radio stations WAY more than I want to, and I watch the MTV quite a bit.
Yet she just went platinum.
I think they’re making that up. I think they’re creating hype.
What I really think is this:
The American public wants to believe that a new artist is “new” “fresh” and that they played some part in discovering this new artist (the way I did with the red hot chili peppers in the early 80’s). I think that trying to prefabricate a superstar while telling the public you are doing so is a mistake.
Case in point: O-Town
The “making the band” band. I watched the whole thing. They got the best voices, dancers, pretty boys, the whole bit. Where are they now?
I like Kelly’s voice, she’s a great singer, I wish her well, but I think she’s going nowhere unless she’s got something unique to contribute to the art.
I agree. The music companies are probably paying their own employees to buy the cd’s by the truckload. They then take the crates of cd’s off to the middle of the desert, bury them in a big pit, pave it over with cement blocks and then add a layer of sand for secrecy…
I amy be wrong but I thought the gold or platinum status had something to do with how many copies were sold to stores and not necessarily how many were purchased by consumers.
Isn’t she supposed to be America’s Idol - the most talented winner of the 1st contest, I hear more about Reuben - he from the 2nd contest than I do about Kelly Clarkson, maybe cause the AI2 is over. But I thought the whole point was she was going to be everywhere for me to be sick of her already. Some Idol she is, I think that show is alot of Crap anyway, I don’t know why anyone watches, and why i know so much, since I haven’t watched either season.
I refuse to buy into it, and will not buy any CD’s from either of the America’s Idols.
RIAA certification is shipment. Their website is dead again (damn hackers), but Google’s cache says so. Note that it is minus returns, so it would catch up eventually if they were rigging it.
Billboard charts, OTOH, use Soundscan, which is retail sales. The album is 7th there in it’s 5th week of release, and peaked at number one. Can’t fake that.
Also, I don’t see why the record companies have the reason to push Kelly Clarkson, and then not push Madonna, who is clearly a much more valuable brand. Her latest release isn’t even Gold yet (after four weeks).
I may be wrong but I thought the gold or platinum status had something to do with how many copies were sold to stores and not necessarily how many were purchased by consumers.
Trust me, many of the girls and guys(!) have bought the album. The guys think she’s hot, the girls like her “Miss Independant” song, which is aimed at teenage girls looking to rebel.
I’d say 100 albums were sold to girls in my school; spread this around the country and take into consideration additional sales and you have 1.3 million.
As far as **O-Town **goes, they were missing one very key ingredient, namely decent songs to sing. No matter how good looking/great dancing/great singing voice you have, if you don’t have good material, your records won’t sell no matter how hard you promote them.
A fabulous example of this is Elvis Presley’s mid-late 1960’s period, when all he was doing was churning out movies and soundtracks to go along with them. He had some of the most godawful songs to work with, Do The Clam??!!
As far as going nowhere unless you have something unique to contribute to the art, I strongly disagree with that. Virtually no one seems to consider Creed unique, in fact it seems that most posters on the SDMB either A) Think they suck ass, or B) Would so like to kill them.
Despite these oh-so-charming sentiments, Creed has released 3 albums which have sold over 20,000,000 copies in the United States alone, along with having 12 #1 songs on on the various Billboard charts.
About the gold/platinum thing–it’s based on what ships, not what sells. An album can ship gold (500,000 copies), but never sell gold. Same with platinum–there was a recent album (can’t think of which one) that shipped double platinum and fell on it’s face by not even selling gold. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) awards the gold/platinum discs. SoundScan, OTOH, is what most compilations (Billboard, Top 40, etc) use to compile their lists, as SoundScan reports only what sells to consumers, not what ships to retailers.
Looks like I’ll be the first here to say this… I know someone who owns the Kelly Clarkson CD. It’s my daughter, and I bought it for her, a couple days after it came out.
I’ve heard it… it’s OK. It’s not really music I would choose to listen to, but there’s also worse out there. My daughter likes it, particularly the song “Miss Independent,” which I believe is getting some airplay these days.
So, if you’re looking for the target market for this, look to kids, especially really young ones who have dreams of being famous. That’s my girl.