Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 08 April 2015

Welcome to Q2–and so far, so good. Overall album sales are up year-to-date 3% over the same period in 2014. Physical CD sales are down 6% year-to-date while digital album sales are up 12% year-to-date over 2014. However, digital track sales are down 5% year-to-date over 2014. Streaming. Gotta be streaming.

Francophone artist Yoan is still at #1 in Canada, selling another 16,000 copies of his self-titled album. That’s a long way ahead of the biggest debut of the week, which is Human from Three Days Grace (#2, 6,700 copies).

Hollywood Undead shows up at #4 with 5,500 copies of Day of the Dead while Death Cab For Cutie’s Kintsugi starts life at #5 with first-week sales of 4,800 units. Sufjan Stevens also snuck into the Top 10 with about 4,400 copies of his Carrie & L0well album.

The number one download in Canada is STILL “Uptown Funk” from Mark Ronson, moving another 18,000 in sales, almost dead even with last week.  And finally,“Uptown Funk” still holds at #11 on the Canadian Streaming Songs chart for the 11^th week,with 1.5 million streams.

In the US, Wale’s Album About Nothing (yeah, he’s a Seinfeld fan) debut at #1 but only needed 88,000 copies to do it.  Ludacris and Ludaversal finished second, a full 25,000 copies behind. Then we have debuts from Darius Rucker (Southern Style, #4, 52,000 units), Death Cab for Cutie (just a few units behind Rucker, #5) and less than a thousand records behind them, Sufjan Stevens (#6).  Three Days Grace’s Human squeaked into the Top 10 with 35,000 units.

The #1 single in the US is, yes, “Uptown Funk.” It’s been at the top for 14 consecutive weeks, the longest #1 of the century so far. Two more weeks and it’ll tie”One Sweet Day,” Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men, which stayed at #1 for 16 weeks from late 1995 through to spring 1996.

However, the song did drop to #2 on the digital downloads chart, edged out by Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” by about 5,000 in sales. Then again, “Funk” was also the most-streamed song in the US last week, with 15.8 million listens. It’s been #1 there for 12 weeks. If it hangs on one more week, it’ll tie Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” for the most weeks at #1 on the streaming chart.

All numbers courtesy Nielsen Soundscan.