Even top popsters are having trouble selling CDs. One Direction sold 401,000 copies of their new album, called “Four.” Hey– anyone would take that number. But “Four” sold 130,000 fewer copies than last year’s “Midnight Memories.”
That’s a lot of ex-fans , despite what I thought wasn’t a bad album. But One Direction is starting to fray, as boy bands do when their fans starting aging out. his could also be the same problem for the movie franchise of “The Hunger Games,” which opened to around $30 million less in box office receipts this weekend than their last installment. It could be that this last iteration of teen pop boom is coming to an end. This is what happened to Nsync and the Backstreet Boys, and even to Britney Spears.
The new kids on the block? A group called Five Seconds of Summer, or 5SOS. They opened for One Direction this past summer on tour. Meantime, the real test for 1D will be next week and the week after. But you know what? I had WPLJ on most of yesterday, and didn’t hear One Direction at all. Just Taylor Swift, endlessly.
