Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 06 October 2015
My data has been coming late these last couple of weeks (if at all), so I apologize for the patchy coverage on the subject.
This was not a good week for music sales in Canada, but we’ll get to that. First, the big picture stuff.
Year-to-date album sales are now down 1% from this point last year, so the industry is hoping that fourth quarter releases from major artists (hello, Adele) will get people buying again. Physical CD sales are now down 7% from 2014 while digital albums are up by the same amount. Digital tracks have fallen 3% over this time last year.
The new #1 album in the country is Sorel Soviet So What from Quebec artist Bernard Adamus, which reached the top spot by selling just 5,100 copies. That’s the fourth-lowest total for a #1 album this year. In second spot is Tangled Up from Thomas Rhett (5,000), followed by Don Henley’s Cass Country (#4, just a few units behind) and Caracal from Disclosure at #9 (3,700 units).
The biggest digital song in Canada is still Bieber’s “What Do You Mean,” which is also the most-streamed song in the land for the fifth week in a row. It was streamed more than 2 million times in the last week.
Over in the US, Don Henley finished at #1 with raw sales of 87,000 records. George Strait’s Cold Beer Conversation is at #2 (83,000) followed by Fetty Wap’s self-titled debut (#3, 76,000), Thomas Rhett (#4, 63,000), Chvrches’ Every Open Eye (#7, 34,000), Dodge and Burn from The Dead Weather (#8, 32,000) the self-titled Hamilton/O.b at #9 (28,000) and the Disclosure record at #10 (25,000).
The biggest digital track in the US is “Hotline Bling” from Drake with a rather anemic 101,000 downloads. Finally, on the streaming side, the biggest song is “The Hills” from The Weeknd with 18.1 million listens.
All figures courtesy Nielsen SoundScan.
