The first stat I don't find hard to believe at all. After all, U2 didn't just stop being popular because they stopped being "relevant".
The second stat's a little harder to swallow.
You don't read very well. The article says twice as many people on iOS. That's not some huge claim. There are, for instance, about 1 billion Android users, which is about 2x more than iOS, that clearly aren't included in this (stupid) stat.
if you honestly believe that today, in the year 2015, that twice as many owners of iOS devices listen to U2 than they do Taylor Swift and Katy Perry COMBINED then there's really no use in debating this topic with you any longer.
I saw that the sample of 978 was taken from Chicago, Illinois of all white males between 30 and 50 years of age and with an average income of $80,000 per year?
No bias there
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Couldn't these people have just turned on shuffle and had one of the SOI songs automatically placed in their library pop up? If 95% of the people that listened to U2 also heard a track from SOI, that seems like a logical explanation.
Couldn't these people have just turned on shuffle and had one of the SOI songs automatically placed in their library pop up? If 95% of the people that listened to U2 also heard a track from SOI, that seems like a logical explanation.
Sure. That's the point.Couldn't these people have just turned on shuffle and had one of the SOI songs automatically placed in their library pop up? If 95% of the people that listened to U2 also heard a track from SOI, that seems like a logical explanation.
I also saw that exact prerequisites for being surveyed was ownership of a U2 iPod, replicas of Bono's Fly glasses, a distaste for Coldplay, delay pedals, and a Vox guitar amp.
Honestly, if you don't believe a marketing research firm because it doesn't feel right to you, then fuck it. No one cares anyway.
All I can say is, U2 360 was the biggest tour of my generation. HTDAAB along with American Idiot were some of the most talked about albums during high school. And it wasn't uncommon to see Elevation tour T-shirts in the 7th grade. I'm only 25, and I've been a fan of the band since ATYCLB. My girlfriend, who predominately listens to alternative music like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Lana Del Ray, and M83, thinks Every Breaking Wave and The Troubles is the shit, can't stand Mysterious Ways, thinks the Joshua Tree is just okay, and insists U2 in Under The Blood Red Sky is the coolest fucking musical event she has ever seen on video. If you think U2 is limited to a certain audience, then you are just ignorant to proclaim so. There are preteens making SOI fan videos on YouTube. They probably don't even know who U2 even looks like.
U2 always had fans across the entire age spectrum, and that doesn't make it surprising that a 1/4 of all active iTunes listeners listen to them, especially considering THEY GAVE AWAY A WHOLE FUCKING ALBUM TO EVERYBODY ON ITUNES. Good god, most of them probably are just listening to Every Breaking Wave because the song is fucking fantastic.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. What a play constituted was left open-ended by the article, so I wasn't sure if a full run through was required. If you can just skip a track over and it counts as a play (I think this is an adjustable setting, I'm not sure what the default is), this data is impossible to draw any useful conclusions from.
My take: this isn't an automated survey pulled by Apple that tracks downloads or song clicks, which is where the "how many people experienced" SOI" number came from.
They surveyed users and a "listen" to me and I would bet most people is listening to a song not "it came on I hated it and skipped it".
I could be wrong but that is what I believe.
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ExactlyExcept Apple wasn't involved in the research whatsoever, an independent company did it, and they didn't share their methodology.
My take: this isn't an automated survey pulled by Apple
Sure. That's the point.
Goal: to have as much people as possible to listen to the new album.
Strategic release: give the album for free.
Result: 25% of the people listens to it in January, twice more than the next artist and 5 months away from the release date and the delete option.
So yes. That's a pretty good explanation of why people are listening to it, and it not only doesn't changes at all what we're saying but actually reinforces it: the release method was a success despite that some people may think otherwise. If next time they could drop the album not only in the iWhatevers but in the androids aswell, they'd do it.
But alas, a simple look at the charts, or at YouTube views, or sluggish (for them) ticket sales will tell you that no, the release was not a strategic marketing success whatsoever.
Can a mod please change the thread title to:
"Watch people who say release strategy was a failure squirm when the data shows the opposite"
I think a lot of us really want this information to be true, so we just take what's presented as is. But let's not begrudge others for questioning the merits of the data
Well, when you can predict who exactly is going to question the merits of the data based on their known history of being on the other side of the argument, it makes their questioning pretty laughable.
Same can be said for who is going to run with the data and claim U2 is as big as ever.
81 million listens in the first month.
26 million album downloads within the first month.
23% of iTunes user base have listened to an SOI song recently after four months.
"Not a strategic marketing success whatsoever."
Based on YouTube hits and shitty radio. You'd think music is only listened to by female teenagers.
"But nooooo.....here's why the numbers can be wrong until we know more about their methods."
If you want to learn more about their methods, then go ASK THEM. It's called E-MAIL! You ever heard of it?
Can a mod please change the thread title to:
"Watch people who say release strategy was a failure squirm when the data shows the opposite"
Yea. I actually did provide you with a few statistics that tend to fly in the face of this data when you asked the last time. Said data was apparently faulty though. Apparently only tween girls use YouTube. Who knew?!
I saw that the sample of 978 was taken from Chicago, Illinois of all white males between 30 and 50 years of age and with an average income of $80,000 per year?
No bias there
Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
If this is true (can you quote a source?) then I'm not sure this Kantar data is saying all that much. Other than 40 year old white dudes ambling to work in their SUVs like to listen to the odd U2 song on the radio (or on their Apple gizmo where it has been freely dispatched). Not particularly revelatory (nor the "relevance" U2 are probably seeking). When you start cherrypicking stats, you always run the risk of missing the forest for the trees #philosophy101
I mean, yeah fine whatever. If you want to boast your YouTube research, go ahead. It doesn't really matter. The last I checked, U2 didn't drop their album for free on YouTube. It was iTunes, wasn't it?