NICKELBACK AMONG TOP SELLING OF 2006, INDUSTRY SLUMPS

According to Neilsen SoundScan, Nickelback was almost the top selling artist of 2006 in a down year for the industry.

Nickelback was the Number Three top selling artist of 2006, and the Number Two Top Selling digital artist of the year. Rascal Flatts topped the list in both categories. The band’s album All The Right Reasons was the Number Four album of the year behind releases by Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood, and the top album of the year High School Musical.

Nickelback continues to straddle the rock and pop line, and we asked Mike Kroeger and Ryan Peake about their mass appeal.

[Kroeger] “I think it’s safe to say there’s a high degree of sense of self in this band. We know who we are, and we know who we’re not. And if it happens that we’re creating music that is not us, if one of us doesn’t get it or all of us don’t get it there’s always one person, there’s always somebody that goes, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s cool, but really not us, really not what we do.” [Peake] “We’ve never really been out to try to be the flavor of the week.” [Kroeger] “We couldn’t do it anyway. We could try as hard as we want and never be that.” [Peake] “We’re terrible dancers. We’d make a horrible pop band, a horrible boy band.” [Kroeger] “I don’t shave enough, you see, in a boy band you gotta really…” [Peake] “We talked about that.” [Kroeger] “You gotta keep up with that sort of thing.” [Peake] “We can’t get him shaved.”

The Neilsen SoundScan indicated that the music industry had a Total Album Sales drop of almost 5 percent, and a Overall Album Sales drop of 1.2 percent. There is some positive news for the industry however. Digital track sales are up by sixty-five percent and digital album sales are up 101 percent. Many attribute the current slump to an adjustment period for the major labels as they sort out their place in a digital world.