AC/DC Score Hit With Wal-Mart

At 12:01 A.M. on October 20th, Wal-Mart opened a temporary 3,000-square-foot store on Hollywood Boulevard devoted entirely to AC/DC's new album, Black Ice. Like the Eagles successfully did a year ago, AC/DC are selling their record exclusively through Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores, tapping into the chain's marketing might and 200 million annual customers at a time when CD sales dropped 36 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan.

The deal is paying off for AC/DC in a big way: Black Ice was on track to sell more than 900,000 copies in its first week at press time, making it the year's second-biggest debut. And Wal-Mart — the nation's number-two music retailer, behind iTunes — has reportedly ordered 2.5 million copies of the record.

Other superstars are making similar deals: Best Buy will release Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy on November 23rd and the Police's Certifiable box set on November 11th. (David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk and Elton John's The Red Piano box sets hit shelves earlier in the season.) And Christina Aguilera's Keeps Gettin' Better hits package will come out at Target on November 11th. "You're talking about retailers that can come up with millions of advertising dollars," says Tom Corson, general manager of Aguilera's label, the RCA Music Group. "That can be attractive if you have the right brand and the right artist."

Wal-Mart has erected AC/DC "rooms" in its stores, selling $11.88 Black Ice CDs — plus the group's catalog, merchandise and an AC/DC version of Rock Band. And in addition to opening temporary AC/DC stores in L.A. and New York's Times Square, Wal-Mart sent black AC/DC ice cream trucks into those cities to hype the disc. "If you are not going to be a digital band [AC/DC don't allow their music to be sold as downloads], then it behooves you to explore opportunities for an alliance with someone who is powerful in the physical world," says Steve Barnett, co-chairman of the band's label, Columbia Records.