Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 23 March 2016

March 23, 2016 Alan Cross 0 Comments 1 min read

Apologies for not providing this information for the past couple of weeks, but my pipeline to the data has been…disrupted.

There are three new albums in the Canadian Top 10 but that hasn’t helped matters much with album sales down 20% from this point last year. And no, that’s not a typo. I did mean to write “20%.”

Physical CD sales are down 15% from the same time in 2015 while digital album sales are down 27% year-to-date over 2015. Well, what about vinyl? Isn’t that supposed to be a bright spot? Actually, yes. Year-to-date sales are 27% higher than last year. Too bad vinyl only accounts for a tiny percentage of overall sales. Finally, digital track sales are down 23% year-to-date over 2015.

In other words, everything pretty mich sucks.

Killswitch Engage’s Incarnate is the #1 album in Canada (nice!) but they only had to sell 4,200 copies (not so nice.) In fact, that’s the lowest sales total for a #1 album since August 2015 and it is the lowest sales total for a first week #1 debut since August 2012 when Owl City’s Midsummer Station made it that far by selling just 3,700 units.

Bethel Music’s Have It All debuts at #5 with 2,000 (!!!) units sold. The other Top 10 debut is from 3 Doors Day after Us and the Night sold less than 2,000 units to make it to #7.

Finally, streaming stats but Rihanna’s “Work” at #1 with three million-ish listens.

All figures courtesy Nielsen SoudnScan.