Should U2 not try to outdo the 360 tour?

[So Cruel]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

[JTBaby]

Popmart really has no business calling any other U2 tour a GH tour...

10 new songs first date
8 by the end

360

7 at the beginning
2 at the end

2 of Popmart's new songs were dropped by the end of leg 1 (Do you feel loved, If god will send his angels) .... And for most part it was same set each night. Absolutely nothing but hits from older albums, including the yet unbeaten U2 live record of having 0 songs from the previous album, Zooropa. It didn't span over 3 years., either.

Meanwhile, 360 added 5 new songs in its second year (Stingray, Glastonbury, Mercy, North Star, Boy falls from the sky). Only the last leg saw new material drop down, probably due to Glastonbury's setlist. And 360 was down to 3, but mostly 4 (Magnificent only missed a few nights, it wasn't dropped completely).

So in other words, by the last leg of NLOTH, it was mostly a nostalgia set.

[xy]

Emphasis being on last leg. Personally I consider it a shame and hope more of NLOTH's successor will be played on the next (arenas for teh foreseeable future, no doubt) tour.

Was Vertigo tour, then, a nostalgia set ? I think pretty much the same amount of Bomb was played, 3-4 songs a night, plus Saints and Window in the skies.

[bethere]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

              Remember this, the album sales figures, chart positions at the end of the year, and concert ticket sales figures, that I have reported are indisputable FACTS!

1. Steve Lillywhite is a music producer, not a music sales or marketing expert. He obviously does not spend his time reading sales reports, and chart figures as well as comparing them year to year.

2. No it doesn't. Breathe was never a single from the album and it was not the first song on the album either or have some other tie in to the tour like Zoo Station and Zoo Tv etc. Less fan reaction typically always happens when you play album cuts that are not singles from a brand new album. It happened on ZOO TV all the time.

3. Get On Your Boots received a lot less airplay than Vertigo or Beautiful Day did, but that did not stop the album from being a success.

4. Rolling Stone is not an accurate source for raw music sales and market data. This is just an uniformed journalist making a faulty assertion.

5. Wikipedia - enough said. Plus the band has never been quoted actually saying disapointment.

Finally, nearly every artist out there has to some degree been disappointed with the raw sales seen over the past five years. But this is disappointment because of the collapse of the music market with the majority of people obtaining music for free, not a failure to appeal to people or compete with other artist out there in the business.

          What you need to know are the album sales data year to year, the chart positions of albums and how they finish the year versus other albums in the market, and concert ticket sales data. That alone provides the answers to these questions or issues, not the alleged things the band said or the mis-characterizations of what they said. Not the ramblings of a music producer as opposed to a music business professional, not a magazine devoted to discussing actual music, art, and culture as opposed to business. The leading music industry paper is BILLBOARD MAGAZINE!

[So Cruel]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

              Remember this, the album sales figures, chart positions at the end of the year, and concert ticket sales figures, that I have reported are indisputable FACTS!

1. Steve Lillywhite is a music producer, not a music sales or marketing expert. He obviously does not spend his time reading sales reports, and chart figures as well as comparing them year to year.

2. No it doesn't. Breathe was never a single from the album and it was not the first song on the album either or have some other tie in to the tour like Zoo Station and Zoo Tv etc. Less fan reaction typically always happens when you play album cuts that are not singles from a brand new album. It happened on ZOO TV all the time.

3. Get On Your Boots received a lot less airplay than Vertigo or Beautiful Day did, but that did not stop the album from being a success.

4. Rolling Stone is not an accurate source for raw music sales and market data. This is just an uniformed journalist making a faulty assertion.

5. Wikipedia - enough said. Plus the band has never been quoted actually saying disapointment.

Finally, nearly every artist out there has to some degree been disappointed with the raw sales seen over the past five years. But this is disappointment because of the collapse of the music market with the majority of people obtaining music for free, not a failure to appeal to people or compete with other artist out there in the business.

          What you need to know are the album sales data year to year, the chart positions of albums and how they finish the year versus other albums in the market, and concert ticket sales data. That alone provides the answers to these questions or issues, not the alleged things the band said or the mis-characterizations of what they said. Not the ramblings of a music producer as opposed to a music business professional, not a magazine devoted to discussing actual music, art, and culture as opposed to business. The leading music industry paper is BILLBOARD MAGAZINE!

Give it up Bethere. You are directly contradicting what Bono states when he says people did not know Breathe. If the album was super popular with the audience like you say it was then they would have known the song. Obviously Steve Lillywhite has the ear of the band. If he says they were disappointed with the sales then why would we believe him to be lying?

If you want to take the tunnel vision view that because No Line was the 7th highest selling album of the year so it was a success, then that's fine. But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

[bethere]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

              Remember this, the album sales figures, chart positions at the end of the year, and concert ticket sales figures, that I have reported are indisputable FACTS!

1. Steve Lillywhite is a music producer, not a music sales or marketing expert. He obviously does not spend his time reading sales reports, and chart figures as well as comparing them year to year.

2. No it doesn't. Breathe was never a single from the album and it was not the first song on the album either or have some other tie in to the tour like Zoo Station and Zoo Tv etc. Less fan reaction typically always happens when you play album cuts that are not singles from a brand new album. It happened on ZOO TV all the time.

3. Get On Your Boots received a lot less airplay than Vertigo or Beautiful Day did, but that did not stop the album from being a success.

4. Rolling Stone is not an accurate source for raw music sales and market data. This is just an uniformed journalist making a faulty assertion.

5. Wikipedia - enough said. Plus the band has never been quoted actually saying disapointment.

Finally, nearly every artist out there has to some degree been disappointed with the raw sales seen over the past five years. But this is disappointment because of the collapse of the music market with the majority of people obtaining music for free, not a failure to appeal to people or compete with other artist out there in the business.

          What you need to know are the album sales data year to year, the chart positions of albums and how they finish the year versus other albums in the market, and concert ticket sales data. That alone provides the answers to these questions or issues, not the alleged things the band said or the mis-characterizations of what they said. Not the ramblings of a music producer as opposed to a music business professional, not a magazine devoted to discussing actual music, art, and culture as opposed to business. The leading music industry paper is BILLBOARD MAGAZINE!

Give it up Bethere. You are directly contradicting what Bono states when he says people did not know Breathe. If the album was super popular with the audience like you say it was then they would have known the song. Obviously Steve Lillywhite has the ear of the band. If he says they were disappointed with the sales then why would we believe him to be lying?

If you want to take the tunnel vision view that because No Line was the 7th highest selling album of the year so it was a success, then that's fine. But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

         1. Breathe was NEVER a single and was not tied in to the title of the album or the tour. The crowd reaction to breathe on 360 is no different to the crowd reaction to any non-single album cut from Achtung Baby on ZOO TV. Achtung Baby was a mega popular album, but that does not change the fact that the album songs that were never singles are new and receive much less crowd response. Also, the idea that most people did not know the song is simply based on crowd movement, which is grossly inaccurate. Bono did not conduct an electronic poll in order to determine who knew breathe and who did not.

         2. As I said before, all artist are to a certain degree disappointed with the actual number of albums being sold now as opposed to 5 or 10 years ago. Everybody is selling less, a lot less because of the decline of the music market due to the fact people are able to obtain music for free these days. Yes, the band would have loved to see 10 million in sales for a global sales figure, but sales like that are no longer possible anymore for virtually anyone. It is very difficult and challenging to sell just 3 million copies worldwide and anyone that does is easily at the top of the music industry. Remember, Steve is a record producer and music sales professional tracking annual changes in the industry. U2 are artist who spend most of their time writing and recording, not assessing music sales trends.

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

           

But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

          4. Do you understand that in the real world, all music artist today are no longer able to sell as many albums as they did 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago? Do you understand that because of that fact, unit to unit comparisons of sales of NLOTH to previous U2 albums are INVALID?

[So Cruel]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

              Remember this, the album sales figures, chart positions at the end of the year, and concert ticket sales figures, that I have reported are indisputable FACTS!

1. Steve Lillywhite is a music producer, not a music sales or marketing expert. He obviously does not spend his time reading sales reports, and chart figures as well as comparing them year to year.

2. No it doesn't. Breathe was never a single from the album and it was not the first song on the album either or have some other tie in to the tour like Zoo Station and Zoo Tv etc. Less fan reaction typically always happens when you play album cuts that are not singles from a brand new album. It happened on ZOO TV all the time.

3. Get On Your Boots received a lot less airplay than Vertigo or Beautiful Day did, but that did not stop the album from being a success.

4. Rolling Stone is not an accurate source for raw music sales and market data. This is just an uniformed journalist making a faulty assertion.

5. Wikipedia - enough said. Plus the band has never been quoted actually saying disapointment.

Finally, nearly every artist out there has to some degree been disappointed with the raw sales seen over the past five years. But this is disappointment because of the collapse of the music market with the majority of people obtaining music for free, not a failure to appeal to people or compete with other artist out there in the business.

          What you need to know are the album sales data year to year, the chart positions of albums and how they finish the year versus other albums in the market, and concert ticket sales data. That alone provides the answers to these questions or issues, not the alleged things the band said or the mis-characterizations of what they said. Not the ramblings of a music producer as opposed to a music business professional, not a magazine devoted to discussing actual music, art, and culture as opposed to business. The leading music industry paper is BILLBOARD MAGAZINE!

Give it up Bethere. You are directly contradicting what Bono states when he says people did not know Breathe. If the album was super popular with the audience like you say it was then they would have known the song. Obviously Steve Lillywhite has the ear of the band. If he says they were disappointed with the sales then why would we believe him to be lying?

If you want to take the tunnel vision view that because No Line was the 7th highest selling album of the year so it was a success, then that's fine. But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

         1. Breathe was NEVER a single and was not tied in to the title of the album or the tour. The crowd reaction to breathe on 360 is no different to the crowd reaction to any non-single album cut from Achtung Baby on ZOO TV. Achtung Baby was a mega popular album, but that does not change the fact that the album songs that were never singles are new and receive much less crowd response. Also, the idea that most people did not know the song is simply based on crowd movement, which is grossly inaccurate. Bono did not conduct an electronic poll in order to determine who knew breathe and who did not.

         2. As I said before, all artist are to a certain degree disappointed with the actual number of albums being sold now as opposed to 5 or 10 years ago. Everybody is selling less, a lot less because of the decline of the music market due to the fact people are able to obtain music for free these days. Yes, the band would have loved to see 10 million in sales for a global sales figure, but sales like that are no longer possible anymore for virtually anyone. It is very difficult and challenging to sell just 3 million copies worldwide and anyone that does is easily at the top of the music industry. Remember, Steve is a record producer and music sales professional tracking annual changes in the industry. U2 are artist who spend most of their time writing and recording, not assessing music sales trends.

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

           

But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

          4. Do you understand that in the real world, all music artist today are no longer able to sell as many albums as they did 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago? Do you understand that because of that fact, unit to unit comparisons of sales of NLOTH to previous U2 albums are INVALID?

I guess I will believe the band and their co-producer. You can believe whatever you want.

[Tumbling Dice]

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

You keep saying this stuff, but the statistics you quote don’t support or in any way prove the points you’re making.  The album sales figure doesn’t show exactly who is buying the albums.  Common sense - which I accept is not one of your fortes -suggests that the large majority were U2’s considerable fan base, made up of fans like me, since real fans are more likely to spend money on buying U2’s music.  So for all we know, hardly any casual record buyers bought NLOTH and therefore we don’t know how many casual fans who bought a ticket to see a 360 show had even heard the new music from NLOTH, especially since none of the singles from the album were chart hits or received much radio airplay.  Since over seven million concert tickets were sold for 360, we can reasonably speculate that a good proportion of concert tickets were bought by casual fans who may well have been unfamiliar with the new songs but bought a ticket because U2 are a big brand in rock music and they wanted to hear the hits that they were far more likely to be familiar with.  You don’t have any facts, factoids or other evidence whatsoever to disprove that plausible analysis.  Plus, your view that the main reason why U2 sold, on average, nearly 30,000 more tickets per show for 360 than for PopMart was because NLOTH was so much more successful and popular with fans than Pop was is absurd.  If I were you, I’d take So Cruel’s advice and give it up, because like Tom Cruise in a foot spa, you’re totally out of your depth.

[Tumbling Dice]

360 and Vertigo both morphed into nostalgia tours, but 360 was the first tour where there was thematically no connection to their latest album and where they dropped most of their new songs.  The 360 production was designed to be neutral so that the band could choose to play new songs from NLOTH or not to depending on how they felt or how they perceived the audience reaction.  Elevation was a fairly neutral show too, but on that tour they maintained their commitment to their new songs right until the end.  On 360 they didn’t have enough confidence in the NLOTH album to inextricably link it their stadium show.  This is not surprising given the eventual poor sales of NLOTH compared to the number of concert tickets they expected to shift.  For 360, more than any other tour, they were relying on their brand to sell tickets to casual fans and they knew that this audience would expect U2 to play mostly their hits and warhorses, including recent ones from the 00s, and so U2 catered to them.

They could not have dropped more than half of the new songs from Pop on the PopMart tour because the stage show was conceived around Pop’s music.  They were inextricably linked.  The PopMart show would have seemed ridiculous if they only played three songs from Pop and made the rest of the set-list with oldies.  But even when U2 played some oldies on PopMart, such as Streets and Bullet, they made them seem new and refreshing by experimenting with the arrangements.  The vast majority of the oldies they played on 360 sounded like they’ve sounded for years.

[So Cruel]

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

You keep saying this stuff, but the statistics you quote don’t support or in any way prove the points you’re making.  The album sales figure doesn’t show exactly who is buying the albums.  Common sense - which I accept is not one of your fortes -suggests that the large majority were U2’s considerable fan base, made up of fans like me, since real fans are more likely to spend money on buying U2’s music.  So for all we know, hardly any casual record buyers bought NLOTH and therefore we don’t know how many casual fans who bought a ticket to see a 360 show had even heard the new music from NLOTH, especially since none of the singles from the album were chart hits or received much radio airplay.  Since over seven million concert tickets were sold for 360, we can reasonably speculate that a good proportion of concert tickets were bought by casual fans who may well have been unfamiliar with the new songs but bought a ticket because U2 are a big brand in rock music and they wanted to hear the hits that they were far more likely to be familiar with.  You don’t have any facts, factoids or other evidence whatsoever to disprove that plausible analysis.  Plus, your view that the main reason why U2 sold, on average, nearly 30,000 more tickets per show for 360 than for PopMart was because NLOTH was so much more successful and popular with fans than Pop was is absurd.  If I were you, I’d take So Cruel’s advice and give it up, because like Tom Cruise in a foot spa, you’re totally out of your depth.

He doesn't get it TD. He'll just come back with album sales/concert stats.

This is the way I see it:

An alien comes to earth and has never heard of U2 or any other band would look at the album chart and see the 7th place finish for No Line and would think that it was a successful album. But once that same alien saw the bands sales history and the expectations for a new U2 album and saw that No Line sits at the bottom of U2 album sales they would clearly see that it was a disappointment. After reading the co-producer and leading industry papers saying sales were disappointing and the singer saying that no one in the crowd knew the new song opener that alien would be 100% positive that No Line was indeed a sales disappointment.

But Bethere will still be convinced it was a huge success.

[bethere]

"They put their heart and soul into everything they do, but the sales were not what they expected because they did not have the one song that ignited peoples imaginations." - Steve Lillywhite Co-Producer on No Line


"I walk out and sing 'Breathe' every night to a lot of people who don't know it," says Bono. - Bono on Rolling Stone interview. Bethere, this directly contradicts that you say everyone in the stadium is there becuase of the success of No Line. Bono is basically saying a lot of people in the crowd don't know the material.

"three out of four members now acknowledge that it was the wrong choice for a first single" - Rolling Stone on Get on Your Boots

"relatively weak sales for No Line on the Horizon" - Rolling Stone U2 article

"The album debuted at number one in 30 countries but did not sell as well as anticipated; the band expressed disappointment over the relatively low sales" - Wikipedia

"No Line was a huge success" - Bethere

So Bethere, who are we to believe? Should we believe the band, the co-producer of the album, leading music industry paper, or you?

              Remember this, the album sales figures, chart positions at the end of the year, and concert ticket sales figures, that I have reported are indisputable FACTS!

1. Steve Lillywhite is a music producer, not a music sales or marketing expert. He obviously does not spend his time reading sales reports, and chart figures as well as comparing them year to year.

2. No it doesn't. Breathe was never a single from the album and it was not the first song on the album either or have some other tie in to the tour like Zoo Station and Zoo Tv etc. Less fan reaction typically always happens when you play album cuts that are not singles from a brand new album. It happened on ZOO TV all the time.

3. Get On Your Boots received a lot less airplay than Vertigo or Beautiful Day did, but that did not stop the album from being a success.

4. Rolling Stone is not an accurate source for raw music sales and market data. This is just an uniformed journalist making a faulty assertion.

5. Wikipedia - enough said. Plus the band has never been quoted actually saying disapointment.

Finally, nearly every artist out there has to some degree been disappointed with the raw sales seen over the past five years. But this is disappointment because of the collapse of the music market with the majority of people obtaining music for free, not a failure to appeal to people or compete with other artist out there in the business.

          What you need to know are the album sales data year to year, the chart positions of albums and how they finish the year versus other albums in the market, and concert ticket sales data. That alone provides the answers to these questions or issues, not the alleged things the band said or the mis-characterizations of what they said. Not the ramblings of a music producer as opposed to a music business professional, not a magazine devoted to discussing actual music, art, and culture as opposed to business. The leading music industry paper is BILLBOARD MAGAZINE!

Give it up Bethere. You are directly contradicting what Bono states when he says people did not know Breathe. If the album was super popular with the audience like you say it was then they would have known the song. Obviously Steve Lillywhite has the ear of the band. If he says they were disappointed with the sales then why would we believe him to be lying?

If you want to take the tunnel vision view that because No Line was the 7th highest selling album of the year so it was a success, then that's fine. But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

         1. Breathe was NEVER a single and was not tied in to the title of the album or the tour. The crowd reaction to breathe on 360 is no different to the crowd reaction to any non-single album cut from Achtung Baby on ZOO TV. Achtung Baby was a mega popular album, but that does not change the fact that the album songs that were never singles are new and receive much less crowd response. Also, the idea that most people did not know the song is simply based on crowd movement, which is grossly inaccurate. Bono did not conduct an electronic poll in order to determine who knew breathe and who did not.

         2. As I said before, all artist are to a certain degree disappointed with the actual number of albums being sold now as opposed to 5 or 10 years ago. Everybody is selling less, a lot less because of the decline of the music market due to the fact people are able to obtain music for free these days. Yes, the band would have loved to see 10 million in sales for a global sales figure, but sales like that are no longer possible anymore for virtually anyone. It is very difficult and challenging to sell just 3 million copies worldwide and anyone that does is easily at the top of the music industry. Remember, Steve is a record producer and music sales professional tracking annual changes in the industry. U2 are artist who spend most of their time writing and recording, not assessing music sales trends.

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

           

But if you want to look at all factors and see that No Line sits near the bottom of U2 albums sold and that the band EXPECTED it to sell a lot more, then welcome to the real world.

          4. Do you understand that in the real world, all music artist today are no longer able to sell as many albums as they did 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago? Do you understand that because of that fact, unit to unit comparisons of sales of NLOTH to previous U2 albums are INVALID?

I guess I will believe the band and their co-producer. You can believe whatever you want.

             Its not a matter of belief, its a matter of knowing the facts underlying the issue.

[bethere]

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

You keep saying this stuff, but the statistics you quote don’t support or in any way prove the points you’re making.  The album sales figure doesn’t show exactly who is buying the albums. 

                  Actually they do both very effectively. Plus, as I have already indicated before, the points I'm making are NOT dependent on who is buying the album. That is irrelevant! The only thing that is relevant are the album sales, concert ticket sales, and how the album performed vs other albums in the same market that year. Simple is that.

Common sense - which I accept is not one of your fortes -suggests that the large majority were U2’s considerable fan base, made up of fans like me, since real fans are more likely to spend money on buying U2’s music.  So for all we know, hardly any casual record buyers bought NLOTH and therefore we don’t know how many casual fans who bought a ticket to see a 360 show had even heard the new music from NLOTH, especially since none of the singles from the album were chart hits or received much radio airplay.

                  It doesn't matter who purchased the album or the ticket. If you have the biggest selling album of the year, you have the most popular album of the year. It does not matter what type of person purchased the album.

Since over seven million concert tickets were sold for 360, we can reasonably speculate that a good proportion of concert tickets were bought by casual fans who may well have been unfamiliar with the new songs but bought a ticket because U2 are a big brand in rock music and they wanted to hear the hits that they were far more likely to be familiar with. 

                 It does not matter who purchased the tickets. No actually knows the type of fan for each ticket purchase for any tour, for any artist, at any time. The fact is, x number of tickets were purchased for 360 and x number albums were purchased for NLOTH. Because NLOTH did so well in the market in 2009, the tour it was supported had very large attendance figures. POP sold relatively poorly in 1997 and this is why the tour supporting POP struggle to sell tickets. This shows that success of the new album of songs is vital to the success of the tour for U2.

You don’t have any facts, factoids or other evidence whatsoever to disprove that plausible analysis. 

                          I don't need any because the analysis is irrelevant.

Plus, your view that the main reason why U2 sold, on average, nearly 30,000 more tickets per show for 360 than for PopMart was because NLOTH was so much more successful and popular with fans than Pop was is absurd. 

              No, that is supported by the facts of how well NLOTH did in the market as compared to POP. NLOTH was the 7th biggest selling album worldwide in 2009. POP by contrast was not even in the top 20 worldwide back in 1997 and peaked at #50 for the year in the United States. A better selling album means a better selling tour. Thats what we see when we compare POP/POPMART to NLOTH/360.

If I were you, I’d take So Cruel’s advice and give it up, because like Tom Cruise in a foot spa, you’re totally out of your depth

            More personal stuff eh?

[bethere]

360 and Vertigo both morphed into nostalgia tours, but 360 was the first tour where there was thematically no connection to their latest album and where they dropped most of their new songs.  The 360 production was designed to be neutral so that the band could choose to play new songs from NLOTH or not to depending on how they felt or how they perceived the audience reaction.  Elevation was a fairly neutral show too, but on that tour they maintained their commitment to their new songs right until the end.  On 360 they didn’t have enough confidence in the NLOTH album to inextricably link it their stadium show. 

                The 360 production was not anymore album neutral than the Vertigo production, Elevation production, or any productions for the tours in the 80s.

                 The first half of the tour, which defined the tour and for which nearly all the tickets on the tour were sold during, had 7 songs from the album in the setlist. The main selling video of the tour had 7 songs in the set list. 14 of the 24 songs were from the year 2000 onwards with only 3 of the songs being hits. The tour is closer to being the opposite of a nostalgia tour.

This is not surprising given the eventual poor sales of NLOTH compared to the number of concert tickets they expected to shift.  For 360, more than any other tour, they were relying on their brand to sell tickets to casual fans and they knew that this audience would expect U2 to play mostly their hits and warhorses, including recent ones from the 00s, and so U2 catered to them.

                 The set list on 360 did not feature any more hits than the POPMART tour did. Same number of songs from the 80s on both tours. NLOTH was not a poor seller given that it was the 7th highest selling album of 2009. Even the best selling album of 2009 did not sell as many albums as the 360 tour sold tickets. Again, its invalid to be making comparisons like this because albums sell much less than they did 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago due to the collapsing market.

They could not have dropped more than half of the new songs from Pop on the PopMart tour because the stage show was conceived around Pop’s music.  They were inextricably linked.  The PopMart show would have seemed ridiculous if they only played three songs from Pop and made the rest of the set-list with oldies.  But even when U2 played some oldies on PopMart, such as Streets and Bullet, they made them seem new and refreshing by experimenting with the arrangements.  The vast majority of the oldies they played on 360 sounded like they’ve sounded for years

                   Again, the POPMART Tour ended only 12 months after the album was released. 360 ended 29 months after NLOTH was released. The reason songs were dropped on the last leg of the 360 tour was because that leg had been delayed over a year and the album was now over two years old. In the industry when an album is over 2 years old, it is considered to be a catalog album and back then albums that were catalog albums were not longer allowed to be represented in the current Billboard 200 sales chart.

[bethere]

          3. The album sales figures, album sales chart positions that I have given, and concert sales statistics are indisputable facts. The points I make are based on those facts. The points you have made are not based on any facts, but simply wild speculation.

You keep saying this stuff, but the statistics you quote don’t support or in any way prove the points you’re making.  The album sales figure doesn’t show exactly who is buying the albums.  Common sense - which I accept is not one of your fortes -suggests that the large majority were U2’s considerable fan base, made up of fans like me, since real fans are more likely to spend money on buying U2’s music.  So for all we know, hardly any casual record buyers bought NLOTH and therefore we don’t know how many casual fans who bought a ticket to see a 360 show had even heard the new music from NLOTH, especially since none of the singles from the album were chart hits or received much radio airplay.  Since over seven million concert tickets were sold for 360, we can reasonably speculate that a good proportion of concert tickets were bought by casual fans who may well have been unfamiliar with the new songs but bought a ticket because U2 are a big brand in rock music and they wanted to hear the hits that they were far more likely to be familiar with.  You don’t have any facts, factoids or other evidence whatsoever to disprove that plausible analysis.  Plus, your view that the main reason why U2 sold, on average, nearly 30,000 more tickets per show for 360 than for PopMart was because NLOTH was so much more successful and popular with fans than Pop was is absurd.  If I were you, I’d take So Cruel’s advice and give it up, because like Tom Cruise in a foot spa, you’re totally out of your depth.

He doesn't get it TD. He'll just come back with album sales/concert stats.

This is the way I see it:

An alien comes to earth and has never heard of U2 or any other band would look at the album chart and see the 7th place finish for No Line and would think that it was a successful album. But once that same alien saw the bands sales history and the expectations for a new U2 album and saw that No Line sits at the bottom of U2 album sales they would clearly see that it was a disappointment. After reading the co-producer and leading industry papers saying sales were disappointing and the singer saying that no one in the crowd knew the new song opener that alien would be 100% positive that No Line was indeed a sales disappointment.

But Bethere will still be convinced it was a huge success.

Do you understand that all music artist today are no longer able to sell as many albums as they did 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago? Do you understand that because of that fact, unit to unit comparisons of sales of NLOTH to previous U2 albums are INVALID?

               

[Tumbling Dice]

If you carry on like this for much longer, bethere, men in white coats are going to come and take you away.