Music Industry

Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 04 February 2015

Let’s, as usual, start in Canada.

Overall album sales are down 9% over last week and down 9% over the same week last year. Year-to-date album sales are down 3% over 2014. Physical CD sales are down 8% year-to-date over 2014. Digital albums up 2% year-to-date over 2014. Wait: up?  Yep. But then we have digital track sales, which are down 9% year-to-date over 2014.

What’s selling this week?

Well, Taylor Swift, for one. Here 1989 album is back at #1 because 5,900 people across the country realized that they still didn’t have the album. The Grammy Nominees album sits at #2 (5,200 copies) and Sam Smith sits third with another 4,900 copies. Going deeper, we find that we just had the lowest one week sales total for a number one album since the first week of September. The lone debut in the top ten belongs to Papa Roach’s “F.E.A.R.” at No. 8. 

On the streaming side, FNielsen Music tracked over 352 million streams in Canada for the seven day period, the most total streams for a one week period since Nielsen Music began tracking Canadian streaming data.  Six different songs surpassed the one million stream mark for the week. That’s never happened before. Streaming is picking up steam.

In ‘Murica, it’s Taylor Swift at #1 for the 10th non-consecutive week with a sales total of 101,000, pushing the overall sales number for 1989 to about 4.2 million. Ne-Yo’s Non Fiction debuts at #2 (49,000) while we have to go down to #9 (Bethel Music, We Will Not Be Shaken, 30,000 units) and #10 (Charlie Wilson’s Forever Charlie, 25,000 copies) for any other notable debuts.

I’m a little shy on the rest of the American music stats, but I’ll update this space as soon as I get them.

 

 

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39684 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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