Weekly Music Sales Report: 15 February 2012
Let’s get the big news out of the way first: yes, Whitney Houston’s music is selling like crazy. Since news of her death came out Saturday night and the time the charts closed at midnight on Sunday, her album, Whitney: The Greatest Hits, sold 64,000 copies in the US alone. That’s essentially one day’s worth of sales–and it all came late Saturday and on Sunday.
With that record now sitting at #6 on the Billboard charts, her other albums also saw sales spikes. She sold 101,000 albums–a rise of 5,994%–from the previous week. In fact, she sold more records from late Saturday throughto Sunday night than she did in all of 2011 and 2012 combined. (Get all the staggering numbers here.)
But just wait until next week’s charts. The figures will be huge. And not just for Whitney, but for Adele, too.
Look what happened leading up to the Grammys. Her 21 album showed a 57% increase in sales, putting her back at #1 for the 29th non-consecutive week since the record came out. With another 21,000 copies sold, she’s well on her way to the 1.1 million mark in Canada alone. And that wasn’t enough, her 19 album saw a 50% spike in sales and is now at #11. With a cover story in Vogue soon to hit the stands, Adele looks to be unstoppable. Still.
All this means that Leonard Cohen gets pushed to #2 with his Old Ideas album. But don’t feel bad; it still sold a highly respectable 20,000 copies, meaning it has already gone gold in Canada after just two weeks.
Van Halen’s DLR reboot, A Different Kind of Truth, debuts at #3 (16,000 copies) while Paul McCartney’s Kisses on the Bottom finishes at #4 (9,500). I’d expect Sir Paul to see a nice post-Grammy bump on the strength of that closing performance on the broadcast.
And Whitney? She has four albums in the chart with her greatest hist record sitting at #28 and her Ultimate Collection at #31. Twelve songs are on the digital songs chart with “I Will Always Love You” at #12, selling 95,000 downloads.
One more fact: Madonna’s new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin’,” is the #1 download with 24,000 purchases, boosted by her Super Bowl performance.
Overall this means that overall sales are up 5% this week in Canada and now running 7% ahead of last year.
In the US, Adele sold 237,000 more copies of 21 to claim the #1 spot with Van Halen ending up at #2 (188,000). The top digital track is Fun. and “We Are Young” (296,000 downloads).
All numbers courtesy Nielsen SoundScan.
