My Song Was Purchased More Times Than You’re Reporting, why?

Sometimes we get emails from well-meaning artists along the lines of, “5 of my friends said they bought my album! But you’re only reporting 2 sales!”

There are two possible causes of this:

1. Maybe the albums were bought later than the last royalty reports we have. Stores are usually 2-months behind on reporting (an album bought today won’t show up for about 2-months).
2. We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… maybe the people who said they bought your album… didn’t. Most people don’t realize the granularity in which artists can see sales data using services like Digitunes. So your friends thought they’d get away with it.

if the problem is #1, just wait a bit and they’ll show up eventually. If you think the problem is #2, call your friends out for being cheap and not supporting your art! 🙂