Why Most New Stuff Comes Out on Tuesday
September 17, 2010 at 5:00 am Chad Upton 3 comments
By Chad Upton | Editor
It’s always exciting when your favorite band releases a new album. But, why do they always come out on Tuesday?
It’s because DVD, Bluray, CD and video game sales are tracked by SoundScan, a company that compiles sales data on these items. They’re like Nielson TV ratings, except for music, movie and video game sales. In fact, SoundScan is even owned by Nielson.
They measure the number of weekly sales starting on Tuesday through to the following Monday. Publishers release new items on Tuesday so the first week of sales data is seven days; that means sales from that week can be compared to sales data from following weeks in an accurate way.
New movies hit theaters on either Wednesday or Friday. Friday is popular for big movies because a lot of people want to see them on the weekend and it will make the three day ticket sales look more impressive, making the movie sound like a hit. Wednesday is popular for movies that don’t want to compete with the Friday blockbusters.
Here’s a list of popular media and the days they come out:
Movies: Wednesday and Friday (Theater), Tueday (DVD and Bluray).
Music: Tuesday.
Video Games: Tuesday.
Books: There is no standard, although Tuesday is fairly common since they are also tracked by Nielson. They are often on shelves before their official release date, unless there is a large advertising campaign that indicates a specific date.
Comic Books: Wednesday.
Broken Secrets
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Sources: Comic Books (Yelp), Music and Movies (Artists House Music), Nielson, Movie Scoop,
Entry filed under: Demystified. Tags: book, comic, date, friday, month, nielson, release, tuesday, wednesday.
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1.
Elbyron | September 17, 2010 at 10:36 am
So that’s why Civ 5 is coming out on Tuesday! But this doesn’t really explain why SoundScan/Neilson chose Tuesdays for their start-of-week. It would sure be nice if Civ 5 came out today so that I could play it all weekend!
2.
Chad Upton | September 17, 2010 at 10:56 am
Hey Elbyron,
I couldn’t dig up the exact reason why SoundScan picked Tuesday. They probably want the whole weekend to fit into a week of sales data and starting on Tuesday gives all of Monday to ensure data from the weekend is in.
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