If that sold 250,000, I'd eat my shoe. I doubt they even produced that many.
10's of 1,000's maybe but could be as low as 5,000-7,500.
special markets releases, like the Hip-O Select Limited Edition 2 & 3 cd sets, are numbered anywhere from 2,000 to 7,500 copies and the label are obviously happy enough with those figures to continue to release them, going from classic Motown artist to artist, among other labels & artists.
In the last 5 or so years Hip-O have issued expanded editions of many Motown acts, including a couple of Marvin Gaye albums, the entire Smokey Robinson back catalogue, The Miracles, Temptations, Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin and now Diana Ross, all sold out, or in the case of the Diana Ross sets, still in the process of selling but pretty healthily from what I can gather (her Last Time I Saw Him set has already sold out as its the first time it's been released on CD).
as I mentioned on here about a few weeks ago, the latest Elton album only had to shift 14,000 copies to get to the UK Number 1 spot, so the whole situation regards sales of mainstream releases is a complete mess, whereas niche/boutique sales are thriving.
surely this should encourage the labels to get more surround out there now..?!?
all we have to go on with the Lynyrd set is that it seemingly sold out online. is this the norm for Walmart or Best Buy exclusives? if so, it's just another normal performing exclusive release. if not, this has been something special.
I'd be curious to know, out of the total sales of the LS set to date, what percentage bought it for what reasons?
how many bought it for the surround, who bought it for the video material, who bought it as hardcore fans, how many just bought it casually cos it was cheap, how many bought it to sell on realising that it would be sought after by people in other countries and by those who never shop in a Walmart..??
I guess we'll never know but I guess there have been hundreds of copies, possibly approaching 1,000 sold just to members of QuadraphonicQuad, of which I believe there are approx 6,000 members - from what i can gather about 10% of whom are active, of which about 20% are regularly active.
that's pretty high levels of interest from a forum where it's ordinarily the same 100 people browsing daily and seemingly the same smaller group of people posting very regularly!