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Thread: FB Likes & Album Sales (Should they correlate)??

  1. #1

    FB Likes & Album Sales (Should they correlate)??

    A recent look at billboard showed that Madien's new album was #1 in sales the first week with 60,000 units sold. They have over 13 million likes. Should that be higher for the first week
    or is a FB like really not worth a shit??? Is this even worth discussing???

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    It's possibly worth discussing, if just to say that it costs the user nothing to give a facebook "like", and therefore it's a currency of very low denomination. Sure, it's saying something - it's saying the person did not actually hate it - but the real measure of how much people like or love something is how much they are prepared to pay for it, or whether they are willing to pay anything at all.

    Answering the original question - yes, I would be surprised if there were not at least some degree of correlation.

  3. #3
    Clicking "Live" takes zero effort. It has no measurable correlation on someone's intent to actually DO something (i.e. buy a product, support a festival, etc.).
    If you're actually reading this then chances are you already have my last album but if NOT and you're curious:
    https://battema.bandcamp.com/

    Also, Ephemeral Sun: it's a thing and we like making things that might be your thing: https://ephemeralsun.bandcamp.com

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    Member Steve F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by progman1975 View Post
    Should that be higher for the first week
    or is a FB like really not worth a shit???
    It's worth LESS than a shit because it is meaningless but some believe it actually means something and think they have actually done something by 'liking' something.

    "Who needs to go to a show or buy a record or get off your ass and live life, when you can like something!"
    Steve F.

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  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by progman1975 View Post
    is a FB like really not worth a shit??? Is this even worth discussing???
    Good rule when in doubt: an fb anything is not really worth a shit.

    I'm sure there's some correlation between those numbers and other numbers, sure, but that doesn't mean likes have any value as currency. They're only a reflection of other things (and an easily exaggerated one at that).

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    Keep in mind you are comparing a cumulative metric (Facebook) with a single week sales figure for one album in one territorY. Difficult to draw any real conclusion.
    Daily jazz vinyl reviews on Instagram @jazzandcoffee

  7. #7
    Studmuffin Scott Bails's Avatar
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    Why would the correlate? They're two completely different things.
    Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally

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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Bails View Post
    Why would the correlate? They're two completely different things.
    I'd be rather asking why wouldn't they correlate? Not a perfect correlation, obviously, but surely if there are a lot of people who like something enough to "like" it, you'd expect that to translate to more people willing to purchase it?

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    Studmuffin Scott Bails's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bob_32_116 View Post
    I'd be rather asking why wouldn't they correlate? Not a perfect correlation, obviously, but surely if there are a lot of people who like something enough to "like" it, you'd expect that to translate to more people willing to purchase it?
    That's already been addressed. "Likes" are free and meaningless.

    Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
    Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally

  10. #10
    Steven Wilson didn't seem to think so when just right after the NA tour finished in early July, he announced that his page had hit over 250,000 likes on his FB page or maybe it was just his admin

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Steve F. View Post
    some believe it actually means something and think they have actually done something by 'liking' something.
    I understand that one's FB "likes" will prompt the Mystery Algorithm to "push" that content in one's "friends" ' news stream, since it is based on "popularity" (failing that, do they even see this content at all in the endless river of advertisement that is FB ?). If it is so, while it indeed means nothing (especially in the absence of a "dislike" button, or any intermediate hues of adoration), "FB-liking" does something (activating one's network and indirectly related networks) - conversely, total passivity is destructive.

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    Member Plasmatopia's Avatar
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    There is a correlation, but there is a huge derating factor involved which varies from band to band. So...no, there is no correlation.
    <sig out of order>

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    All Things Must Pass spellbound's Avatar
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    Any imagined correlation would be meaningless, as it is skewed toward people who buy albums and have Facebook accounts and bother to "like" some of the albums they own. I know for a fact that some music lovers have no interest in Facebook. It is possible that some people on Facebook "like" albums they do not own.
    We're trying to build a monument to show that we were here
    It won't be visible through the air
    And there won't be any shade to cool the monument to prove that we were here. - Gene Parsons, 1973

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    I have the feeling that some people posting in this thread are using the word "correlation" in a very loose sense rather than the mathematical sense.

    Mathematically (and trying to keep things as simple as possible), the correlation expresses how in step the variation in one quantity is with the variation in the other quantity. It does NOT imply causation (though a high correlation COULD be the result of causation).

    The extreme case would be if the record sales were exactly proportional to the number of likes, which would give a correlation of 1.0.

    Alternatively a correlation of zero would mean that records with a lot of sales tended to get on average exactly the same number of likes as those with low sales - something i find difficult to conceive. The situation almost certainly lies somewhere in between.

    It's also possible to have negative correlation - though I'd say that's unlikely in this particular example.

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    I also think it is telling that for every person buying the damn thing you have over 200 "liking" it (13M/60K). In other words, A "like" ain't worth squat.

  16. #16
    The FB "Like": the peso of the Interwebs.
    Last edited by trurl; 09-14-2015 at 12:21 PM. Reason: fixed typo

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    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    The FB "Like": the peso if the Interwebs.
    If there's one thing that annoys me more than the Facebook "like", it's the devaluing of the word "friend". To me, a friend is someone who you know, who you respect and whose company you enjoy; you are there to suppport one another when needed. A friend is not just someone who put a tick in a particular box.

  18. #18
    I hear ya. I have paired my FB friend list down to people that I have actually met in real life, and they're all people I would want to be in a room with. Or relatives. The notion of "Joe Blow has 8,247 friends!!!" is pretty silly.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by bob_32_116 View Post
    Mathematically (and trying to keep things as simple as possible), the correlation expresses how in step the variation in one quantity is with the variation in the other quantity.
    That's how I was thinking of it. If somebody has a high number of sales, it's reasonable they'd have a high number of likes (whether the degrees exactly match or not). It doesn't mean there's any connection between the two or that either of the numbers means/signifies anything. Those things are irrelevant.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Spiral View Post
    That's how I was thinking of it. If somebody has a high number of sales, it's reasonable they'd have a high number of likes (whether the degrees exactly match or not). It doesn't mean there's any connection between the two or that either of the numbers means/signifies anything. Those things are irrelevant.
    Geek alert !!!

    I design mathematical models for a living, and I also have a vested interest in Facebook likes and CD Sales ... hence the post

    Correlation is a very simple math model, and implies a strong relationship between one factor and another.
    Facebook Likes and CD sales are unlikely to simply 'correlate' in the mathematical sense of the word.

    There is however a 'relationship' between the two, because both things have a common factor driving them that we can think of as 'Popularity'
    The more Popular one is, generally, the more Facebook likes a band gets
    The more Popular one is, generally, the more cds they sell.
    (Popularity is, of course, an abstract concept that we can imagine, but not directly measure)

    The problem is that Popularity is not the only thing driving either of these values. Facebook Likes also depends on factors like 'Fan demographic' (and their likelihood of using the Facebook 'Like' function). cds sales also depends on factors like 'Fan Demographic' (and their likelihood to download illegally, or buy the music legally). there are many other influencing factors for each.

    We can think of these as 'noise' sources for our original hypothesis of "CD Sales = Function (FB Likes)"

    I think that, whilst there probably is a loose relationship between the two, for any practical purposes (like CD sales prediction) there's just too much noise to make such a model useful or accurate.

    Geek mode off

    Phil.

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by progman1975 View Post
    or is a FB like really not worth a shit???
    Nail on the head. Think the recent general elections in the UK prooved that

  22. #22
    Plus, sometimes FB likes are fake.

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by trurl View Post
    Plus, sometimes FB likes are fake.
    Sometimes?

  24. #24
    If you sell to 10% of your likes on Facebook you're doing well. And in the current scene 1000 sales for an underground/non heritage act that's good. If you appeal to a younger audience you'll be streaming more and selling a bit of vinyl.

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by ytserush View Post
    Sometimes?
    Yes, they aren't all.

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