The Beatles 1 and 1+

To be fair, the Forbes article said the original was moving "at least 1000 copies per week" (in the US), so 1,000 is the minimum in the deadest of dead sales times.

In other words, without having remixed anything, the pre-remixed 1 might very well have moved 8,889 last week anyway because of the season.

 

I would've gladly bought that, but regarding the issue of lower-than-expected sales, it seems to me that the videos are generally not going to be really appealing at this point in time to anyone but hard-core (read: old) fans.

The remixes are a big selling point for me and some others here, but the main word to describe this forum's response so far seems to be "underwhelmed".

 

As others have alluded to here the lack of advertising on this set is both surprising and perplexing. I'm a huge Beatles fan, but were it not for social media (by the Beatles themselves and not really by any third parties I follow) or this forum I wouldn't have a clue this was out. It's not like there's an abundance of music stores for you to wander around any more and point of sale displays to entice you to these things either.

In the UK we had an itv special - on a Wednesday night, but one advert in the middle of the X Factor would have highlighted this set to the market so easily. Why hasn't this been done? The X Factor is watched by families across the country - think of all those kids who see this and think that's just what their parent would want for Christmas, or partners thinking the same about their other half? Are UMG expecting these people to come across this online and understand the difference to the cd that is sat on the shelf at home?

Perhaps I am reading this all wrong and this release just isn't that important to the company and they know this is just a holding release until they can get the Ron Howard doc out there.

 

Theoretically possible? Yes. Likely in this particular case? Most doubtful. All 4 UK record charts of the 60s sampled a balanced mix of large, medium, and small record shops, per Alan Smith. Read this and all will be revealed:

https://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=103263

During the 60s, Record Retailer's share of chart reporting record shops ranged from 10-13%. Disc was 16-23%. NME was 31-37%. Melody Maker was 33-47%. In this specific situation, given the known info, it is not mathematically logical to assume that this 10-13% sample could be better or more representative than the other samples.

I'm not saying Record Retailer is without merit, it is just of lesser merit than what Guinness/Official Charts Co/Apple/EMI/Universal are giving them credit for. There are better solutions for 60s UK chart history than using Record Retailer, which is the worst possible option.

 

Anyone looking forward to the vinyl being released this Friday?

 

You bring up a good point. I sent the CD/DVD to my sister in California and she called me to say "Thanks, but I think we already have this Beatles album". I had to tell her that it was a "videos collection" of that same album and they've enjoyed watching it multiple times since then (mostly my nephews - 3 and 7 years old and budding Beatles fans). So even a holiday shopper like her, who likes The Beatles and has little Fab fans at home, would've walked straight past this release thinking its that same old album.....

Pretty bad product marketing by Universal IMO.

 

I agree. Branding it to the "1" CD was a mistake. Having a half dozen versions was a mistake. They should have kept it clean with a videos-only package. They confused the market and are paying a price for it.

 

I thought one of the reasons for the "anomalies" in the remixes and videos was the need to spend time and effort on marketing instead. Hmmmmm.

 

I bought the blu ray /CD set and I love it! I think it sounds great, but I was tslking with my friend and he doesn't like it because he says that it is compressed and limited. I listened again and I couldn't hear it being overly compressed or limited. To me it sounds like it could be mildy compressed/limited. Can anyone comment on this?

 

Very interesting. It's funny how I only view this product as a huge fan and not from the point of view of a casual fan. Still, I was watching some of these clips with a girl over the weekend and she was loving them, and she is a casual Beatles fan, so while they may not have done a good job marketing this as being different from a CD release, the content itself is perfect for casual fans.

 

While I understand what you're saying, the "50 best videos" would not have differed much from what we got. We pretty much got the 50 best videos. I wish we could have gotten "This Boy" (that's the only thing I can think of that's missing), but other than that, I think they gave us a fantastic collection.

Marketing- and sales-wise, I can understand the confusion, and maybe just calling it "The Beatles' Video Collection" or something along those lines would have helped tell potential customers that this is different. We Beatles freaks are a different breed than the average consumer.

 

A lot of customers will overlook the DVD listing because a lot of DVD's included with CD's have been lame. Because of this being the third issue of this CD, they will assume they have it already. It should have been heavily promoted as a special edition video collection with a bonus CD.

 

As far as I'm concerned, 1/1+ is NOT being promoted. No one in my office has come up to me with "the news", which usually happens when the media is promoting the Beatles product. If UMG/Apple decide that there is no demand for 1/1+, they really need to go to business school and major in marketing. How can you sell something if no one seems to be aware of it?

I'm amazed that sales are as high as they are...

 

;^) For sure. And from that standpoint, and leaving aside differences of opinion about the audio merits of and song selections for this batch of remixes, a remix of #1's is nice, but what's needed is a remix of the (whole) catalog.

 

Its a Sneeze put your headphones on and listen again at 0:39, I know a Liverpool sneeze when I hear one

 

Giles's new promo video version of All You Need Is Love does not even keep in time with the vocal, The Anthology version did, this is because half way through the song the speed is increased by 0.1 (or the music is slowed down??), I have spent two days now trying to correct it, nightmare !!

 

I had a similar experience with a friend who was visiting couple of weekends ago. When she showed up, I was watching the 1+ videos and we had a quick chat about what was playing on the screen. The next morning, she asked me to play some more Beatle videos and we ended up watching pretty much every unique video on the set. Yeah, she's not someone who's gonna dissect every video or look for remix differences or play this every few weeks.....but she definitely seemed to enjoy watching them.

These are the kind of casual fans that Apple/Universal seem have to completely missed with their "1" marketing strategy. I am not saying every casual fan would buy it but in current situation, very few people even know about this release.

 

TV/newspaper/magazine ads don't drive much in the way of sales these days. Those media are all in the same freefall of a decline as the music business. The fans who are most likely to buy are connected to the band in the millions via social media and the web where I was bombarded with advertising. Sales of 1+ paled in comparison to how many people are connected, so even that captive audience wasn't terribly convinced. But, the internet is where the big music marketing efforts go. I can't remember the last time I saw a TV ad for anyone's album.

 

Yes, I agree. The marketing and the tie-in are the flawed part, in my opinion. The 50 "best" videos could have been exactly the same as what was included. I have no problem with the videos themselves. It was the tie-in with the 1 CD that created (I think) confusion among many buyers.

 

On paper, though, tying it into the 1 CD is a good idea. It all makes sense. I think they just needed to get the word out more.

 

At least if they were going to market it to a release they should have used the 1962 to 1970 albums, because as noted they have been to many #1 Cd releases in recent years, or update the old '20 Greatest Hits' album them using that artwork (which was much more classy than #1's IMO) they could have dropped the 'Twenty Greatest Hits' and just called it 'Fifty Greatest Hits' or how ever many there are on the single disc and just gone for this.. shame so much more potential for this release

 

Tying it into the Red and Blue albums would have made a LOT more sense. Much better artwork, too!

 

I think, at first, it seemed like a good idea. And before the product actually came out, no one here really complained. But analyzing it now, it is a flawed idea. The BIG deal was the promo films. But by connecting it to the CD, it took half of the focus away from the videos. Then, the CD had only 27 songs, but many of the best promos were not part of the 27 (for example, Rain, Strawberry Fields, Revolution). So then they had to add another iteration of the product. So suddenly instead of the "50 best promo films" (or whatever it could have been called), you got a CD plus DVD/Blu-ray set. But it should have been just the DVD/Blu-ray. There was no reason to give 7 options. The 1 CD is already out there. There should have been just one DVD package and one Blu-ray package.

 

Fair enough. I feel ya. I am a bit annoyed I have to go to another disc to watch "Hey Bulldog" or "Don't Let Me Down." I would rather have all 50 videos in chronological order, but what are ya gonna do? I don't think they could have fit all 50 videos on one BD/DVD, so it had to be split up, and they wanted to offer a "best-of" of the videos, and that is essentially the 1 CD, so they did it like that. I get it.

 

But the focus should have been 100% on the promo films. But tieing it into the 1 CD pulled half of the focus away from the videos.

Also, if there were time constraints so that Apple needed to split up all 50 videos onto 2 DVDs, then they could have made a 1-DVD (less expensive) set and a 2-DVD (more expensive) set, which would have been a better option. And if they weren't hampered by needing to include the exact same 27 songs onto the first DVD, then even the less-expensive 1-DVD of the Beatles best videos could have definitely included promos like Strawberry Fields and Revolution, which are among the very best ones. But by tieing it to the 1 CD, many of the best promos got forced onto the second DVD of the deluxe set.

In my mind, though, I would have still done one DVD package and one Blu-ray package (even if each set had to be 2 DVDs or 2 Blu-rays). Just two options. No confusion.