Dale Cooper

Almost twice the number of Tay, let's go for 180m weekend!

I mean, if it had been a brilliant movie (much better than the first two), it's hard to know what would have happened but that doesn't really feel like something to consider. No, I meant Potter. I forgot that the second one opened lesser than the first, but other than that they all grew in box office in their first day of release (and probably would all have had bigger OWs than their predecessors, even though it's hard to compare Wednesday openings with Friday openings). It's a stark contrast to how sizeably Mockingjay Pt 1 fell from Catching Fire even on previews and opening night. I would think that at least the core fans would stick with it being split in two parts (they did so for Potter and Twilight at least). That to me suggests that there simply was a lower interest by that time than for the first two movies. I very much doubt that it being just one movie would have changed that.

I feel like some are overanalzying why YA (dystopians) has gone down in popularity. Every genre has its ups on downs, and YA peaked somewhere around Potter and Twilight ending and Hunger Games starting. I think the issue was more a lack of quality together with oversaturation. I heavily a series like Twilight would have been able to do close to what it did today either, because YA just does not sell as it once did. I very much doubt it. Simple comparisions with Harry Potter (where every successive movie opened bigger than the one before) and Twilight (where every movie past New Moon opened remarkably consistent) shows that there just was lower interest after Catching Fire in the Hunger Games franchise. It feels like a long stretch to argue that it would have outgrossed Catching Fire if it would have been one movie.

In Sweden, presales for The Marvels looks absolutely dreadful. It's gonna drop at least 75% (and possibly even upwards 85%) in terms of audience from CM.

And also, she's only US centric in the sense that she is more popular in US than anywhere else (on average). She's still the biggest artist right now internationally as well. It's not like, say, Star Wars that while pretty much the most popular domestic ever is handily beat by contemporary big movies internationally.

Much wider reach?? She's massive in Oceania though. And even though she isn't the biggest artist in South America she's still clearly very big there. In Africa she's possibly not that big, but then again, just as for Box Office, it's not exactly a big market.

Whether she's highly regarded or not is another question entirely. She's comfortably more popular in Europe than Beyonce, Adele is possibly more popular in UK but not in the rest of Europe. Coldplay is hard to say, they are a touring force surely and their current tour is huge.

This is the biggest peak we've ever seen from a female artist right now. I would somewhat agree that Taylor needs to sustain her popularity for another decade in order to overall be bigger than Madonna. Either way, there's certainly not a bunch of other women she's behind. No chance whatsoever.

Yes, it's an argument considering it's quite a unique situation. We're talking about a re-issue with multiple worldwide hits, with arguably her biggest ever hit. It's not really the same thing as releasing a standard deluxe edition, or 10 years later releasing a new recording of the same songs as before. I'm sure there has been a lot of re-issues close to TFM, to not as big of a success, but that doesn't make it the same. The fact that sales of these albums are combined absolutely do inflate the albums overall popularity in a way that's not comparable with any other album I can remember. While it's certainly true that a lot of Taylor's songs aren't known outside of her fanbase, it's also true that a some of her songs are very well known outside of her fanbase. I have a hard time believing songs like Blank Space, Shake it Off and Love Story aren't known outside of her fans. Anyway, let's go down that road for a minute. Taylor is at her absolute peak of popularity now. I'd think that the way people consumes music these days are quite drastically different to how people consumed music 15 years ago (or even 10 years ago). Today I would think people to a much higher degree listens to exactly the music they want to listen to because of streaming. When Gaga's was at her peak, I'd think that much more people consumed music in a way where they didn't decide what they would listen to. Which is a reason why I would think a lot of the biggest songs from 10-15 years ago are actually more widely known than their counterparts from the past years are (not because they were bigger songs, but because the shape of the music industry has changed). I'm not saying Gaga wasn't huge, she obviously was, Taylor is just in a different league. No shame in being less popular than the biggest ever female artist - everyone else is in the same boat.

Well, I think that's a bad comparision for multiple reasons. For one, that album was released twice with sales counting towards the same unit. Secondly, it was released in an era when physical sales, while on a downward trajectory, still were pretty big. It wasn't until 1989 Taylor properly had transitioned into pop, and by then the physical sales market had gone down quite a bit. She's also at her peak of popularity now, and nowadays sales are down the drain. Adele is the big outlier the past 10 years in terms of actual sales, but she also appeals to an audience that's more likely to buy an album. As for touring not being the only measure of success, that is true, but it's the single most important one these days by quite a huge margin. Anyone could potentielly buy an album for 15 bucks, not everyone would be willing to spend 150 bucks on a ticket to a concert. It truly shows how big the demand for an artist is. Taylor could probably have sold 50 million tickets to her current tour if it was possible to play in front of that many on a single tour. Lady Gaga has never ever been anywhere close to that kind of popularity.

Are people seriously trying to argue that Gaga peaked higher than Taylor? Taylor's current tour is probably going to generate about as much revenue as Gaga's entire music career up to this point has done. In fact, no artist the past 20 years has been close to as big as Taylor is right now. Sure, she hasn't sold as many albums as Adele, and maybe not as many streams as Drake, but she beats them on every metric that matters. Ed Sheeran was obviously huge as well, but he could barely sustain his popularity for 5 years, never mind 15 years. It's hard to compare artists of the streaming era with artists of previous music eras, but it seems to me that Taylor's current tour is the most in demand of the past 50 years or so.

Even though I knew it was gonna do well on digital, it's actually quite incredible how well it has done. Avatar truly seems unstoppable.

But GTA V has sold more in the past four or five years than the entire Elder Scrolls series have done in total. So if gaming has gone in one way it clearly has not affacted GTA V. Anyway, great numbers for Vol 3. Should come in around Vol 2 for the second weekend.

It may impact a bit, but it's not like 10 million people buying a game is that much. It will be such a small difference if it indeed impacts that it probably won't be quite enough to correlate it with certainty to the release. It's not really comparable to 100 million watching a game of football or such.

Mario is doing good in Sweden as well, hard to know exactly where it will end up but somewhere around 500-600k admits probably. Guardians looks a bit better in pre sales than Ant Man and should have much better sales from now on so it should be fine. Probably gonna be quite a bit lower than the first two despite that. I had a bit higher hopes for John Wick, even though it increased from Part 3. But I guess it is in line with most other markets, but it's too bad it couldn't break out more since it is such a good film. The Way of Water seems to end up at around $18.05m and 1.155m admits. Spectacular.