Okean Elzy's New CD Mira goes Platinum?

According to some Internet reports OE's new album had 170,000 advance orders as of the CD's release date on April 25. While this may or may not be the case, the problem of accurate numbers when it comes to CD sales in Ukraine has always been difficult and will continue to be.

An number of years ago when Ruslana held a press conference announcing that her CD had gone platinum there was a lot of anti-PR regarding this announcement from other groups in Ukraine, including OE. I guess Sviatoslav Vakarchuk has learned that if you want the press to write about how many CD's you've sold you have to put the numbers out their yourself.

Many musicians I have spoken to who have deals different labels in Ukraine or work with distributors can never get the clear figures of the number of CDs they have sold, let alone whether if their CD is selling at all.

Word in the industry today is that in order to get a new talent known you have to spend a minimum of 200K, however, unfortunately there are people who put their money behind non-talents.

While watching CITI TV's Hit Parade the other day no other than Sting broke into the top 20 of the local chart.

Now for a little Parody, imagine this scene:

Sting gets up at an industry event and says. Will I have been awarded so many different awards in the music industry, but the one that accomplishment that I cherish the most is breaking into CITI TV's Top 20 chart. As usual, I would like to thank my publishers, my management, and all the people who assisted to ensure I would make it on to the charts of such a prestigious chart at CITI TV's Top 20... Thanks go out to all the viewers of CITI TV for having at least a clear conscious and a little bit of taste when voting for me and helping me break into the ever so competitive Ukrainian music market.