MiC Sales Report

[runnersdialzero]

I think the highest it got on Amazon's sales rank was the mid-60s?  Last I checked, anyway.  That's not that good, considering the bilge that did better.  The deluxe Dylan box was much, much higher (top 12 or so) and pretty close in price. Clearly, a properly marketed rarities set would have been the right decision.  But I like the boxset a lot for what it is.

Even though it's been 20 years since the GV Box -- there's still just such an over-saturation of career retrospectives for this band.  And as such, a $120-140 set was pretty bad marketing decision -- I would think.  Even though it's a pretty darn good retrospective.

Gotta disagree here old Bean, Hawthorne CA was a rarities set and I'm pretty sure it sold quite badly. It is my stance that if MiC had been a rarities set the only people who would have bought it would be the people who frequent this board, the blueboard and maybe a few thousand others. 

I'm kind of wondering if the folks who bought MIC is a group limited to people who frequent this board, the blueboard and maybe a few thousand others, too.

[Wirestone]

It was definitely dumped on the market, without much promo. Kind of a disappointing end to the 50th reunion celebrations.

Still a nice set, though.

[Disney Boy (1985)]

It was definitely dumped on the market, without much promo. Kind of a disappointing end to the 50th reunion celebrations.

Still a nice set, though.

Disappointing? I thought MIC was by far the best aspect of the entire 50th anniversary celebrations! Give me WIBNTLA and Where Is She over TWGMTR or a live show any day of the week... I just don't get why it wasn't more heavily promoted.

[Mike's Beard]

It was a year too late.

[bluesno1fann]

MIC itself is great. But I think the problem is the lack of fans. They're simply not nearly as many fans as there are with other classic rock bands.
Once again, it's their long-suffering image problem.
The front cover didn't help either. There should have been a much better cover, instead of a gold/orange cover with a wave which did little more than make people say stuff like "oh the horror", or "No more bubblegum crap" or "Surfin' Bullshit".
It's a shame, as it's a fucking great box set

[Niko]

I like the cover. Simple and bold.

[Smilin Ed H]

MIC itself is great. But I think the problem is the lack of fans. They're simply not nearly as many fans as there are with other classic rock bands.
Once again, it's their long-suffering image problem.
The front cover didn't help either. There should have been a much better cover, instead of a gold/orange cover with a wave which did little more than make people say stuff like "oh the horror", or "No more bubblegum crap" or "Surfin' Bullshit".
It's a shame, as it's a fucking great box set

Agree.

[mikeddonn]

What chance does it have if the only chain left in the UK isn't stocking it in the shops for some reason?

[The Shift]

What chance does it have if the only chain left in the UK isn't stocking it in the shops for some reason?

By the same measure, what chance does the only chain left in the UK have if it doesn't stock what we want for some reason?

[Freddie French-Pounce]

What chance does it have if the only chain left in the UK isn't stocking it in the shops for some reason?

By the same measure, what chance does the only chain left in the UK have if it doesn't stock what we want for some reason?

I bought the new Franz Ferdinand CD in there yesterday on a whim. It can't be dead yet, though it only seemed to be stocking Pet Sounds [mono/stereo], Pet Sounds [2012 mono/stereo] and Friends/2020 two-fer. And Pet Sounds. And one copy of The Very Best Of The Beach Boys.

They did have the TWGMTR LP though!

[smilethebeachboysloveyou]

Gotta disagree here old Bean, Hawthorne CA was a rarities set and I'm pretty sure it sold quite badly. It is my stance that if MiC had been a rarities set the only people who would have bought it would be the people who frequent this board, the blueboard and maybe a few thousand others. 

That depends on what you mean by rarities I suppose...

Hawthorne had 2 genuinely unreleased songs in Lonely Days and A Time to Live in Dreams. Stuff like Party songs without overdubs were never going to be that desirable...

Yeah, I agree.  I think a rarities set that focused primarily on unreleased but more or less finished tracks would sell a lot better than Hawthorne did.  With this box I think the problem might have been more the lack of promotion, and the fact that it came out so long after everything else in the reunion apart from the underwhelming C50 live CD.

Which is a shame, because it's a great box that presents their career effectively while still including enough rarities to make it enticing to people like us.

[mikeddonn]

John you are right about that.  I did manage to get Today, Smile and TWGMR on vinyl in there about a year ago. Great feeling to see those lps in there.  Freddie, they also have a Pet Sounds T-shirt! Pity it wasn't black or I'd have bought it.  FOPP had a Smile one about 6 months ago.

[Dunderhead]

Can't say I'm particularly surprised.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

It was definitely dumped on the market, without much promo. Kind of a disappointing end to the 50th reunion celebrations.

Still a nice set, though.

Disappointing? I thought MIC was by far the best aspect of the entire 50th anniversary celebrations! Give me WIBNTLA and Where Is She over TWGMTR or a live show any day of the week... I just don't get why it wasn't more heavily promoted.

I think Wirestone meant it was disappointing it had been dumped on the market with little promotion.

[Wirestone]

It was definitely dumped on the market, without much promo. Kind of a disappointing end to the 50th reunion celebrations.

Still a nice set, though.

Disappointing? I thought MIC was by far the best aspect of the entire 50th anniversary celebrations! Give me WIBNTLA and Where Is She over TWGMTR or a live show any day of the week... I just don't get why it wasn't more heavily promoted.

I think Wirestone meant it was disappointing it had been dumped on the market with little promotion.

That was, indeed, my point.

The price was also just way too high for this kind of thing. I know it breaks down okay, and I didn't mind paying it, but it surely turned people off.

[chris.metcalfe]

[
I'm kind of wondering if the folks who bought MIC is a group limited to people who frequent this board, the blueboard and maybe a few thousand others, too.

If so - then they really should have made it a 3-CD rarities box. I was dithering about buying it as I don't need 70% of the tracks, and with all this about the 3rd disc I really can't be bothered to spend £70 ($100+). Also, for us UK buyers, I mean - what is a "high-school yearbook" ?   

[Disney Boy (1985)]

It was definitely dumped on the market, without much promo. Kind of a disappointing end to the 50th reunion celebrations.

Still a nice set, though.

Disappointing? I thought MIC was by far the best aspect of the entire 50th anniversary celebrations! Give me WIBNTLA and Where Is She over TWGMTR or a live show any day of the week... I just don't get why it wasn't more heavily promoted.

I think Wirestone meant it was disappointing it had been dumped on the market with little promotion.

That was, indeed, my point.

The price was also just way too high for this kind of thing. I know it breaks down okay, and I didn't mind paying it, but it surely turned people off.

Ah, point now understood!

Anyway, we're all talking as if we know MIC hasn't sold well, but does anyone actually know...?

[Andrew G. Doe]

Also, for us UK buyers, I mean - what is a "high-school yearbook" ?   

It's a yearbook. From, like, highschool. 

[GhostyTMRS]

Whether MiC had been an all-rarities set or simply a greatest hits package it would've helped if it had been readily available in STORES. Finding the darn thing caused a lot of stress that Tuesday afternoon. I realize that there's a generation that's grown up purchasing mp3's or whatever online, but I like to go into a record store, plunk down my cash and walk out with my purchase. A lot of people were denied that experience with this fiendishly hard-to-find box set. Moreover, had it been sitting on shelves in Wal-mart, Best Buy and Target that would've goosed sales. It was like the box set that didn't exist. I know someone will rail against that and say "but you just could've ordered it on Amazon". Believe me, there are more people 45 and up who don't order anything online than you might think.

The second downfall was the price. I swallowed hard and paid it but whenever a friend or co-worker asked about the box set (after I showed it to them because they didn't even know it was out) the conversation went like this:

Friend/Co-Worker: Hey, that looks cool. Maybe I'll stop off at Best Buy on the way home and buy that myself.

Me: Sorry, it's not on sale in any of the major chains.

Friend/Co-Worker: Oh...well, how much was it?

Me: $135

Friend/Co-Worker: What?? That's insane! Oh, forget it.

[leggo of my ego]

Any word on sales yet?

Would be a real shame if it doesn't sell well...

we may know how bad they were if they start discounting them to $75.00 or less.

[Shady]

MIC itself is great. But I think the problem is the lack of fans. They're simply not nearly as many fans as there are with other classic rock bands.
Once again, it's their long-suffering image problem.
The front cover didn't help either. There should have been a much better cover, instead of a gold/orange cover with a wave which did little more than make people say stuff like "oh the horror", or "No more bubblegum crap" or "Surfin' Bullshit".
It's a shame, as it's a fucking great box set

It's not a "lack of fans", the beach boys still sell very well. Also they still put asses in Seats on tour.

The problem is no advertising, bad timing, no promotion from the band and the fact it was way too expensive.

Look how well smile did, that's because it got a average advertising campaign. MIC got simply no promotion, it just got randomly released

[Les P]

MIC itself is great. But I think the problem is the lack of fans. They're simply not nearly as many fans as there are with other classic rock bands.
Once again, it's their long-suffering image problem.
The front cover didn't help either. There should have been a much better cover, instead of a gold/orange cover with a wave which did little more than make people say stuff like "oh the horror", or "No more bubblegum crap" or "Surfin' Bullshit".
It's a shame, as it's a fucking great box set

It's not a "lack of fans", the beach boys still sell very well. Also they still put asses in Seats on tour.

The problem is no advertising, bad timing, no promotion from the band and the fact it was way too expensive.

Look how well smile did, that's because it got a average advertising campaign. MIC got simply no promotion, it just got randomly released

MiC also didn't get a single mention by anyone at the BW-JB show in Houston, which is inexplicable to me.  I am not a big Mike Love fan, but I must admit he plugged the heck out of TWGMTR during the C50 show, and all copies at the venue were sold out.

[smilethebeachboysloveyou]

MIC itself is great. But I think the problem is the lack of fans. They're simply not nearly as many fans as there are with other classic rock bands.
Once again, it's their long-suffering image problem.
The front cover didn't help either. There should have been a much better cover, instead of a gold/orange cover with a wave which did little more than make people say stuff like "oh the horror", or "No more bubblegum crap" or "Surfin' Bullshit".
It's a shame, as it's a fucking great box set

It's not a "lack of fans", the beach boys still sell very well. Also they still put asses in Seats on tour.

The problem is no advertising, bad timing, no promotion from the band and the fact it was way too expensive.

Look how well smile did, that's because it got a average advertising campaign. MIC got simply no promotion, it just got randomly released

MiC also didn't get a single mention by anyone at the BW-JB show in Houston, which is inexplicable to me.  I am not a big Mike Love fan, but I must admit he plugged the heck out of TWGMTR during the C50 show, and all copies at the venue were sold out.

Since Brian, Al, and David are not allowed to use the Beach Boys' name, does that also mean that they would not be allowed to sell copies of MiC at their shows?  I assume that they could still plug the box, but plugging is less effective when they don't have physical copies of the box with them to sell.  Even so, for the life of me I don't understand why they wouldn't be encouraging people at their shows to buy it.  Even if one or more of them has a grudge against one or more people currently playing under the name of "The Beach Boys," poor sales for this boxed set hurts everyone.

[Matt Bielewicz]

What chance does it have if the only chain left in the UK isn't stocking it in the shops for some reason?

By the same measure, what chance does the only chain left in the UK have if it doesn't stock what we want for some reason?

Bit late to this aspect of the discussion which is now upthread a ways, but... John, you mean HMV/Fopp, right? When I was trying to work out if I would be able to get MiC in my local Fopp in Cambridge, they said that they, ie. the HMV/Fopp chain corporately speaking, weren't allowed to order from Universal at the moment (this was in mid-August - don't know if that's still the case). The guy said it was a 'business thing' but would not elaborate. Without any inside knowledge and based purely on guesswork, I assumed that either a) Universal are still pissed at HMV for how they went into receivership and were or are still owed money from that, or b) the resurrected HMV/Fopp has got into trouble AGAIN and was on 'stop' with Universal for new orders at that time. That's not good in either scenario, considering HMV/Fopp are the only UK bricks and mortar record chain left and Universal are now pretty much the only major label left following all the EMI/Sony/Warners mergers.

But as I say, that's ALL based on me extrapolating from what the guy said, and might all be smoke on my part. Perhaps it was a temporary supply thing that, six weeks later, is already ancient history.

Needless to say, I didn't buy MiC from Fopp 

(Amazon Germany got my coin, as I said here at the time)

[Matt Bielewicz]

...and to comment back firmly on topic, ie. regarding sales, it seems to me that a BB rarities set could only ever appeal to the hardcore fanbase. The powers that be know that the numbers prepared to shill for such a release are not that impressive... as I recall, worldwide sales of the Hawthorne set were WELL under 100,000, maybe even under 50,000. Certainly it had shifted about 30,000 six months after release, and one could reasonably assume that the major flow of sales would be finished by then.

So they probably didn't want to go there again. Hence the MiC format - all the hits PLUS rare stuff, in a bid to pull in the casual consumer or floating voter who wants to look into the band seriously for the first time, and wants a handy, catch-all set to do that with.

It's fair to say that making it the price it was in the States probably knocked the willingness of BOTH potential groups of customers to buy it. The floating voter decides to investigate another big rock group of history instead with another, cheaper set, and some of the hardcore fanbase, annoyed by the price, decides to wait or rely on rips or Spotify etc. Whether that's what actually happened, I don't know, but I can see that it could have worked out like that. If that's what happened, then you can postulate a scenario where the set didn't catch fire in terms of selling to the general public, and not all of the hardcore fanbase bought it either, which means it would have sold even less overall than a Hawthorne-type set. But lest this be thought of as me adding to the voices saying 'they shudda dunn a raritez-ownly sett, doodz'... what I'm saying is that a rarities set wouldn't have sold well either (see Hawthorne, California). Or at least not in the numbers that the group/record label like to think of as successful.

A more positive outcome that may yet come to pass is that this set is a strong long-term seller, like the GV box was. That is, it doesn't fly off the shelves in chartbusting quantities straight after release, but sells respectably over the coming years as the go-to 'one-shop stop' release for those wanting to get into the band's back catalogue. However, it may be harder for boxed sets to achieve that kind of status these days, when people can nab a torrent of pretty much anything for free in no time.

Despite all of that doom-saying, MiC remains a fantastic set, and, at the price I paid for it in Europe (84.48 Euros, or just over 113 US dollars and £74.20 on my UK bank statement), I felt it was an absolutely worthwhile purchase. I loved the physical package, *and* I thought it sounded good overall. I know there were lots of complaints here about the overall sound, the new mixes, etc (which was the usual cross-section of on-line fun: 'it's bass light!', 'it's TOO bassy', 'there's NO bass on mine... oh wait, I have a Spotify rip at 28 bitz/s', 'it's too dull-sounding!' 'it's full of sibilence!' etc etc), but whether it's because I've got tin ears or whatever, I personally thought it sounded great on my old-fashioned stereo system and there wasn't a new mix I didn't like; your mileage, of course, may vary.

And for me, it wasn't just 'skip to the rarities and don't play the rest' — as I detailed here in the days after receiving it, I thought it makes for a great listen-through as an entity, which was something of a surprise, given how well I know some of the tracks already. I was just going to rip the new/unreleased stuff to my iPod, but I ended up putting the whole set on, as it's a terrific listening experience *as one thing*. It's a belter on long car journeys!

But as a chartbuster... I can see why it wouldn't be re-writing the rules on sales rankings. It's a long-term respectable seller, at best.

I guess the most negative follow-on from this way of looking at the release is that it doesn't bode well for future 'deep-cut' sets. I think we can all give up hope of an Adult Child de luxe box set... if any of us really thought that would happen anyway. Or indeed, gave two hoots for such an idea to start with...!