Weekly Music Sales Report – 04 September 2013
I keep getting these a day late. Sorry about that.
The last unofficial week of summer was pretty good with a 9% bump in overall sales from the previous week. The market is still down 3% from last year, but the industry is hoping for a big spring to the finish with plenty of big-name Q4 releases coming down the road.
The CD death spiral has things down 15% year to date while digital albums are up by 16%. Digital singles are ahead by 12%.
The new number one is Avenged Sevenfold’s Hail to the King, which is off to a healthy start with sales of 21,000 copies. The next debut is found at #7 with Franz Ferdinand’s Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action with an anemic 3,400 units. And the final Top 10 debut is Big Sean’s Hall of Fame (#10, 3,100 copies.)
As for the biggest single in the country, people went beserk over Eminem’s “Berzerk,” downloading it 50,000 times, giving it at #1 debut.
Over in the US, sales remain at-6% from 2012, led lower by a 13% drop in CDs. Digital albums are up by 4% while digital singles continue to be a victim of streaming. Sales are running 3% cold over last year.
There are four debuts in the American Top 10, including a new #1. Hail to the King from Avenged Sevenfold sold better than anything else (159,000 copies). Big Sean can be found at #3 (72,000), Juicy J at #4 (64,000) and the Alabama and Friends compilation at #8 (32,000).
Katy Perry’s “Roar” is still the biggest download, selling another 448,000 copies, well ahead of #2 “Berzerk” from Eminem (362,000).
And when it comes to the most-streamed song, people just can’t stop twerkin’ to “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus. It had 7,802,019 listens.
All numbers courtesy Nielsen Soundscan.
