Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 12 November 2014

The six weeks leading up to Christmas is the most important sales period of the entire year. So how’s it going so far?

Not well.  Year-to-date album sales are down 6% from this time last year, brought lower by a 6% drop in CD sales, a 6% drop in digital albums and a 13% fall in digital downloads. And the numbers are probably going to get a little worse given that a year ago, both Celine Dion and Eminem powered Q4 with albums that’s sold more than 100,000 copies in their first week.

It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift is at the top of the Canadian charts again, moving another 37,000 copies of 1989.  That’s only one-third the number she sold in week one, but no one is really complaining.

Calvin Harris debuts at #2 with 7,300 copies of Motion, followed by Very Good Bad Thing from Mother Mother (#4, 5,900), a Quebecois tribute album entitled On A Tous Quelque Chose De Sweet People (#5, 5,000) and Highways Heartaches And Time Well Wasted from Lisa Leblanc (#7, 3,400).

The most downloaded song?  Still “All About that Bass” from Meghan Trainor with another 16,500 sold.

Over in ‘Merica, Taylor Swift sold another 402,000 copies of 1989 for a two-week total of 1.29 million. New in the American Top 10 include Bette Midler’s It’s the Girls (#3, 40,000) and Calvin Harris ($5, 35,000). The biggest download is still “All About That Bass” with sales of 190,000.

On the streaming side in the US, no more Meghan Trainor. Taylor Swift bumped her off the top spot after nine weeks with 16 million listens of “Shake It Off.”

Question for next week: Where will the Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways finish?

All numbers courtesy Nielsen SoundScan.