Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 22 October 2014

We’re getting close to the end of the year, so things are getting a little tense.  Year-to-date album sales are down 5% from 2013. Physical CD sales are down 5% year-to-date while digital album sales are udown 6% year-to-date over 2013. Then there’s digital track sales. They’re down 13% from last year.

No surprise that Rose Ave., the debut album from the duo You+Me (Dallas Green and Pink) entered  at number one on the Top Albums chart with a healthy 23,000 units sold. Coming in second, is Florida Georgia Line’s sophomore album Anything Goes with 16,000 copies. From there, we have Sadnecessary, the debut full-length album from Milky Chance, enters at No. 3 with 9,000 units sold.

What about U2?  The physical version of Songs Of Innocence debuted at No. 5 with 4,600 units sold. I wonder if they expected that? Finally, we have The Game’s Blood Moon: Year Of The Wolf debuts at No. 8 with 3,600 copies,  units sold. It surpasses the No. 17 peak of his last album “Jesus Piece” in December 2012.

Here’s a shock. Taylor Swift’s new single “Out Of The Woods” debuts at number one on the Digital Songs chart with 21,000 downloads sold. It’s her seventh chart-topping song. 

Over in ‘Mercia, we have Florida Georgia Line debuting at #1 (197,000 copies). The next-highest debut is Bob Seger’s Ride Out at #2 with 59,000 units (compare that to a #12 debut in Canada) followed by You+M at #3 with about 50,000 units.

Moving down the charts, we have The Game at #7 (33,000), Hoodie Allen at #8 (30,000), U2 at #9 (28,000) and Jessie J at #10 (25,000).

The biggest download in the US this week is–surprise–Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods” with 195,000 sold and the most-streamed track in all the US is still Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.” If you’re counting, that’s the seventh straight week at number one on the Weekly Combined Stream Playlist, with 12.9 million streams.

All figures courtesy of Nielsen SoundScan.