Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 15 October 2014

Wow. On time for a change! What went wrong?

Here in Canada, there were five new entries in the Top 10, but that hasn’t helped with year-to-date album sales, which remain 5% lower. Physical CDs are also down 5% year-over-year while digital albums are down 7%. Sales of individual digital tracks are softer by 13%.

Jason Aldean’s Old Boots, New Dirt starts like at #1 album chart by selling 16,000 units. He’s only the third country artist to have a #1 in Canada this year (Miranda Lambert and Eric Church did it earlier).

Hozier’s self-titled album showed up at #2 with 8,800 copies. It’ll probably maintain nicely following his appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend–although SNL ratings are at historically low levels.

Moist–yes, them–comes next with Glory Under Dangerous Skies, their first album of new material since 1999. It debuted at #8 with 4,000 copies.. Them we have Maxime Landry’s 3E Rue Sud” at #9 (4,000 copies) and Weezer’s Everything Will Be Alright In The End at #10 by selling 3,500 copies.

Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” still still #1 on the Digital Songs chart for the seventh week, selling another 20,000 downloads. Taylor Swift and “Shake It Off” holds at No. 2 for the sixth straight week.

Over in the US, Jason Aldean sold a very healthy 278,000 copies to debut at #1, followed by Hozier (#2, 58,000), Weezer (#5, 34,000), Stevie Nicks’ 24 Karat Gold (#7, 33,000) It’s About Us from Alex and Sierra (#8, 27,000) and Keshia Cole’s Point of No Return (#9, 25,000).

The only other news I have is that Meaghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” is still at #1 on the most-streamed list with 13.4 million listens.

All figures courtesy Nielsen SoundScan.