Backstreet Boys Unlikely To Reclaim First-Week Sales Record

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Nov 29, 2000 Source: Sonicnet Submitted By: anna Backstreet Boys Unlikely To Reclaim First-Week Sales Record, Retailers Say Black & Blue selling well, but not fast enough to break *NSync's mark of 2.4 million copies. Brian Hiatt reports: The Backstreet Boys may soon be calling for a recount. The group's new album, Black & Blue, will top the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, but it appears to have failed to break the first-week sales record set in March by *NSync's No Strings Attached, retailers said Monday. "It fell short of *NSync. My guess is it'll do 60 to 70 percent of what they did," said Scott Levin, director of marketing for Musicland Stores Corporation, which owns the Sam Goody chain. "It's still a huge album, though." "It fell short of *NSync. My guess is it'll do 60 to 70 percent of what they did." — Scott Levin, director of marketing for Musicland *NSync sold 2.4 million copies of No Strings Attached in its first week, breaking the record of 1.13 million that the Backstreet Boys set with 1999's Millennium. At the Tower Records chain, Black & Blue has sold about 15,000 copies nationwide since its release last week, while No Strings Attached sold more than 45,000 copies in its first week at the chain, company spokesperson Sara Hanson said. "I'm really disappointed with the first-week sales — Sade and the Beatles far outsold the Backstreet Boys," said Howard Krumholtz, buyer at a West Hollywood, California, Tower Records store. But Black & Blue, which includes the hit ballad "Shape of My Heart," exceeded expectations at another major retail chain, Best Buy. "They did very well — we doubled the sales you usually do on a high-profile new release," spokesperson Donna Beadle said. A number of retail insiders said that "Shape of My Heart" was not as strong as "Bye Bye Bye," the first single from No Strings Attached. "The faster they can get a second single out, the better," Musicland's Levin said. In e-mails to members of the group's online street team, Backstreet Boys representatives had unabashedly touted the goal of topping *NSync's sales record with Black & Blue. Group member A.J. McLean recently told Teen People magazine that he expected to "break *NSync's record and our record combined the first week out," but the group backed away from that prediction in a press conference last week. "I was trying to think optimistically. ... It's not about quantity, it's about quality of the actual music. But materialistically, it'd be nice to break new records and start a whole new trend again," McLean said. Shelby Wheeler, southeast marketing coordinator for Virgin Megastores, said that while the Backstreet Boys were not outselling *NSync, their album should still be considered a success. "They're #1 on the charts, but everybody wants to compare them to *NSync," Wheeler said. "It's too bad." Comment on this item. Next Item: Backstreet Unlikely To Top Sales Record Prev Item: Backstreet Fall Short of Record