Weekly Music Sales Report and Analysis: 29 April 2015

Here’s what happened this past week starting with Canada.

Overall album sales are up 2% over the same period in 2014. Physical CD sales continue to decline, 5% over last week, 3% over the same week last year and down 6% year-to-date over 2014. However, digital album sales are up 12% year-to-date over 2014. Digital track sales are down 5% year-to-date over 2014.

Sound & Color, the new album from Alabama Shakes, debuts at #1 with 8,800 units sold.  Yelawolf’s Love Story debuts close behind at #2 with 8,300 units sold. Finally, we have Dean Brody’s Gypsy Road showing up at #7 with 2,700 units. The big digital song in Canada is still “See You Again” from Wiz Khalifa with 30,000 downloads. It’s also the most-streamed song in the country with 2 million listens. It’s followed by “Uptown Fun” from Mark Ronson (1.3 million) and “Thinking Out Loud” from Ed Sheeran (940,000).

Alabama Shakes is also #1 in the US but with an extremely anemic sales number of 97,000 units. There’s only one other debut and that’s Yelawolf at #3 with 59,000 copies. On the digital side, it’s more Wiz Khalifa with 316,000 downloads of “See You Again.”

All figures courtesy Nielsen SoundScan.