Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 05 February 2014
The Grammys are just what the industry needed, Canadian sales are still 6% below where they were at this time last year, but that’s an improvement over where the market was a week ago. CDs are still down year-over-year, though,(-6%) as are digital albums. Meanwhile, digital tracks are soft by 9%. But like I said, this is an improvement over last week.
The top album in the land is still the Grammy Nominees compilation, selling 11,000 units. Meanwhile, look what happened to albums Grammy winners/performers:
- Lorde (up 27%)
- Daft Punk (306%)
- Beyonce (17%)
- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (45%)
- Kacey Musgraves (145%)
- Kendrick Lamar (94%)
- P!nk (35%)
Meanwhile, even though there were only a couple of hours in the sales week after Bruno Mars Super Bowl performance, he also saw big gains with Unorthodox Jukebox getting a 120% bump and Doo-Wops & Hooligans going up 130%.
There are two debuts in the Top 10 this week. Down With Webster’s Party for Your Life starts its life at #2 with 6.500 copies. Further down, Of Mice and Men’s Restoring Force debuted at #9.
Finally, Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” remains atop the download chart with 34,000 fresh purchases, a 35% increase, largely because her Grammy appearance.
In the US, year-to-date album sales are down 13%, brought lower by a 17% drop in CD sales from 2013. Digital albums aren’t faring too much better, trailing last year’s sales by 11%. Digital tracks are down by 11%, too.
The Frozen soundtrack is still #1 on the album charts for the fourth non-consecutive week, selling 94,000 copies, which represents a 1% gain over last week. That Grammy Nominees compilation is at still at #2 but with a healthy 47% increase in sales. Of Mice and Men pulls in at #4 (51,000) and Casting Crowns’ Thrive bows at #6 (43,000).
Here’s how the Grammys affected sales of winners/performers:
- Lorde 5-3 (+86%),
- Imagine Dragons 11-8 (+65%),
- Katy Perry 9-9 (+22%),
- Daft Punk 39-10 (+300%),
- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis 14-11 (+62%),
- Kacey Musgraves 28-12 (+177%),
- Kendrick Lamar 33-21 (+81%)
As for Bruno Mars, his Super Bowl performance propelled his two albums up the charts Unorthodox Jukebox moving 18-7 (+180%) and Doo-Wops & Hooligans popping 82-19 (+303%).
Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse” is the top download (373,000, up 27%) and the most-streamed song is “Drunk in Love” by Beyoncé and Jay Z with 6,980,576 listens.
All numbers courtesy Nielsen Soundscan.
