Robin Thicke does not seem to be having a good time at the moment, with his hilariously misjudged #AskThicke Twitter promotion, and very poor sales in the UK and US, but in Australia it looks even worse.
Thicke managed to sell a disappointing 24,000 copies of his post-breakup album Paula in the US in its first week, scraping into the top ten and number nine, and a very poor 530 copies in the UK, charting at 200th. However, in Australia the Blurred Lines singer only sold 54 copies, which didn’t even break the top 500, according to official statistic froms ARIA.
Out of a population of 22.7 million, and despite the marketing push behind the record by Interscope and Universal Music, only 54 people decided it was worthy of their money.
Artists in decades past may have been able to maintain at least reasonable record sales for the followup to a huge commercial success like Thicke’s previous release, Blurred Lines, as people would buy the album without having heard much of it. In a world where streaming services like Spotify help people “try before you buy”, a record that has been universally panned by critics is just not going to sell.
