Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis for 02 April 2014

Not much improvement this week with overall album sales still lagging 2013 by 7% with physical CDs down 7%, digital albums down 8% and digital tracks down 12%.

The Frozen soundtrack sold another 9,100 copies to stay at #1, which means it should crack the 100,00 mark at some point this week.  In second place is Johnny Cash (despite remaining stubbornly dead) with 8.500 copies of Out Among the Stars, his highest-charting album in the Soundscan era.  The other debut in the Top 10 is Shakira’s new self-titled album with 6,3000 copies, good for #4.

The biggest single is still “Happy” from Pharrell Williams.  That’s six weeks in a row.

In the US, year-to-date album sales are down 17% (!!!) from last year, with physical CDs dropping by 20% year-over-year.  Digital albums are down 14% from last year and digital tracks are soft by 12%.  There’s no way to put lipstick on that pig.

The Frozen soundtrack is still at #1 for the third week in a row and the eighth week overall.  It moved another 161,000 copies, almost double of what Shakira’s #2 album sold (84,000).  Johnny Cash is in third spot (54,000) followed by Memphis May Fire’s Unconditional (#4, 27,000), Erica Campbell’s Help is at #6 (23,000) and Barry Manilow (!?!) and his Night Songs debuts at #8.

Pharrell’s “Happy” sold another 310,000 times, putting it at #1 on the singles chart for the seventh week in a row.  Meanwhile, Kay Perry’s “Dark Horse” was the most-streamed song with 7,556,171 listens.

All number courtesy of Nielsen Soundscan.