Weekly Music Sales Report: 11 January 2012
Yes, things took a dump on both sides of the border, but in the week following the holidays, it’s perfectly normal. No one is panicking. Yett.
Actually, 2012 has started with some good news. Sales for the first week of this year are 11% higher than this time in 2011. Catalogue sales are strong (up 22% for recent items, 25% up for deep catalogue), which probably means people are still redeeming the gift cards they got for Christmas.
Sales of CDs continue to suck. They’re already trailing last year’s numbers by 6%. It’s nice that digital track sales are up 39% over 2011 and album-equivalent sales (which are counted when someone buys ten or downloads at a time) are up 18.5%. But we all know how slim the margins are there, right?
The #1 album in the land is, yes, 21, from Adele, moving another 19,000 copies and making this the 25th non-consecutive week the record has been at #1. Sales-to-date in Canada? About 955,000, making that magic one million mark just two or maybe three weeks away.
LMFAO is inexplicably still selling and have the #2 album right now while Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto has settled in at #3.
The top digital track in Canada is LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It.” No, I don’t know why.
Over in ‘Merica, it’s much the same story with sales declines from the holidays but some nice year-to-year gains, especially in the catalogue area. In fact, almost 53% of ALL album scans came from deep catalogue items, which broke the record set the week after Michael Jackson died and everyone went out to buy more copies of Thriller and Off the Wall. Gift cards again? Or are people more excited by older music than the current offerings? Discuss.
On the album charts, it’s Adele at #1 with another 125,000 units, putting her in position to break the 6 million mark next week. She should have no trouble selling another 52,000 copies in the next seven days. By the way, this is her 15th non-consecutive week in the top spot and she’ll probably tie the record the Titanic soundtrack set way back by next Wednesday.
Drake’s Take Care is at #2, selling 42,000 copies while the Black Keys’ El Camino put in a strong showing to bounce up to #3, about 250 copies behind Drake. Coldplay is at #5, having comfortably broke through the one million mark.
As for digital tracks in the USA, it’s Jason Mraz with “I Won’t Give Up” with 229,000 downloads in just its first week.
