[...] the true fan is not prepared to wait for 6 months for a major label to "set-up the campaign" to market a release.With Australian retail sites such as sanity.com.au accessible from anywhere in the world, access to any iTunes a matter of just having the right credit card, and the industry that has been built by companies such as Rocket Exports in Australia, it is no wonder Kylie's local US release was stiffed as a local US release. The core fanbase had already bought it ... months ago.
Make you wonder how much of the Australian charts/sales come from online sales exports?
The exact same thing happens in Australia but with slightly different numbers. From a US point of view, it's often not worth selling in Australia due to the low sales even of popular CDs. So Australians often import from Amazon and the like. And yet still, even obscure acts (like Germany's Apocalyptica) have local releases here.
I expect the online/export/import market of even a very small (percentage wise) number of fans in the US would be a massive market when compared to our local market.
Five and a half thousand sales in a week would put you at number 1 in Australia.