Album Sales

It’s been a while since I checked the charts to see how albums are selling. Just as I thought, they’re still selling fine. It seems that the 7% drop mostly affects the pop, mainstream rap and soundtrack blockbusters. Rock and indie appear to be doing fine.

It was harder to get data back in the 80s and early 90s, but most indie bands rarely expected to sell much more than 25,000. To put things in perspective, Rolling Stone published rough sales figures for their http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938174/the_rs_500_greatest_albums_of_all_time">500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. In nearly 40 years, Astral Weeks sold only 500,000. Velvet Underground and Nico only 311,000. A Love Supreme, Funhouse, Remain In Light, Marquee Moon, Closer, Ziggy Stardust, Hunky Dory, Low, Trout Mask Replica, Horses, The Harder They Come, Never Mind The Bollocks, Natty Dread, New York Dolls, all under 500,000. Loveless sold 225,000.

This year, Vampire Weekend has already surpassed Loveless and VU & Nico with 311,869, as have M.I.A. and Weezer. From last week’s new releases, Kings of Leon nearly challenged the latest bot from the Disney factory for top debut. TVOTR nearly made the top ten. Seems to me that sales are just fine. As usual, 99.9% of all musical artists cannot depend on blockbuster sales to make a living. They gotta work and tour like everyone else, nothing new there.

Albums Released September 23, 2008

Billboard Rank, Album, Sales:
02 Demi Lovato – Don’t Forget, 88,973
04 Kings Of Leon – Only By The Night, 74,353
12 TV On The Radio – Dear Science, 32,076
20 Jackson Browne – Time The Conquerer, 24,532
21 Cold War Kids - Loyalty To Loyalty, 22,241
24 Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue, 20,585
33 Plain White T’s – Big Bad World, 15,336
35 Thievery Corporation – Radio Retaliation, 14,253
97 Mogwai – The Hawk Is Howling, 5,643

Totals for other albums currently in the chart (U.S. only):
Coldplay – La Viva La Vida, 1,773.932 (sold 721,207 it’s first week in June)
Metallica – Death Magnetic, 958,731 (sold 489,883 it’s first week)
Madonna – Hard Candy, 647,552
Radiohead – In Rainbows, 625,011
Weezer – Red Album, 351,331
M.I.A. – Kala, 335,277
Vampire Weekend, 311,869
Beck – Modern Guilt, 217,714
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular, 180,573
Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eryum Vid Spilum End, 99,860
Fleet Foxes, 86,478
Santogold, 83,791
DJ Khaled – We Global, 67,627
Dragonforce – Ultra Beatdown, 48,284
Michael Franti & Spearhead – All Rebel Rockers, 23,359
Okkervil River – Stand Ins, 20,546

Albums Released September 8, 2007
02 Talib Kweli – Eardrum, 60,479
08 As I Lay Dying – Ocean Between, 39,490
18 M.I.A. – Kala, 28,780
22 Rilo Kiley – Under The Black Light, 26,613
34 New Pornographers – Challengers, 20,069
74 Minus The Bear – Planet Of Ice, 9,342
193 Caribou – Andorra, 3,892

Albums Released September 12, 2006
01, Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds, 68, 684,461
09, The Mars Volta – Amputechture, 66, 59,078
32, Mastodon – Blood Mountain, 85, 24,199
41, TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain, 87, 20,806
66, Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, 86, 14,491
95, The Black Keys – Magic Potion, 75, 10,647
113, The Rapture – Pieces Of The People We Love, 80, 9,204
142, Los Lobos – The Town And The City, 6,964
Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye, 81
Xiu Xiu – The Air Force, 77
Basement Jaxx – Crazy Itch Radio
The Brazilian Girls – Talk To La Bomb, 71
Mouse On Mars – Varcharz, 75

Kinda what I thought was going on, but it's cool to have numbers. Interesting stuff.

I shouldn't be surprised that Coldplay outsell Radiohead, but still, it disappoints me.

this is some good stuff, i kind of figured as much. thanks for this info.

Coldplay probably does outsell Radiohead but these numbers are off. Radiohead sold that web-site only box set about three months before the commercial release. most fans, including myself, bought directly from the band and these sells are not reported.

MGMT outselling Santogold WTH

MGMT are on a major...

Yes, In Rainbows sold 1.2 million online worldwide last year, but even that number is contentious. The Soundscan charts don't include online sales. Neither does the data from Worldwidealbums.net, which lists the total as 1,670,500. If an album is not on the Billboard top 100, the sales info is not available to the public. I get Top 200 info from the Chart Analysis forum at Ukmix.org. Two years ago I asked around if anyone has access to the extremely expensive Soundscan data, with no luck. It would be interesting to be able to list the sales next to all the albums in the year-end lists.

Worldwidealbums.net does keep a list, but it's only an estimate, and incomplete (don't know what happened to data for M.I.A,, MGMT, Fleet Foxes or Santogold, or Stereolab, Elbow, Tricky, etc.).

01 Coldplay – La Viva La Vida, 5,548,400
02 Duffy - Rockferry, 3,604,320
03 Madonna – Hard Candy, 3,086,680
04 Lil' Wayne - Tha Carter III, 2,835,240
08 Metallica – Death Magnetic, 1,976,000
11 Radiohead – In Rainbows, 1,670,500
14 R.E.M. - Accelerate, 1,180,660
29 Portishead - Third, 695,360
Vampire Weekend, 574,560
Weezer – Red Album, 570,400
The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing, 559,000
Death Cab For Cutie - The Narrow Stairs, 550,740
Muse - Haarp, 534,080
The Ranconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely, 522,940
Nas, 486,620
Young Jeezy - The Recession, 478,400
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War), 464,720
Beck – Modern Guilt, 399,400
Kings Of Leon - Only By The Night, 371,000
Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of Understatement, 377,720
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree, 374,120
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, 364,380
The Verve - Forth, 351,040
Sigur Rós – Med Sud I Eryum Vid Spilum End, 356,060
The Mars Volta - Bedlam In Goliath, 316,000
N.E.R.D. - Seeing Sounds, 292,480
Judas Priest - Nostradamus, 285,940
Cat Power - Jukebox, 282,720
In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose, 267,040
The Fratellis - Here We Stand, 224,580
Children Of Bodom - Blooddrunk, 199,520
The Roots - Rising Down, 196,280
Flogging Molly - Float, 195,320
Hot Chip - Made In The Dark, 188,080
The Black Keys - Attack & Release, 181,640
My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade Is Dead!, 178,160
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV, 177,680
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges, 174,660
Opeth - Watershed, 158,760
Dragonforce – Ultra Beatdown, 111,620
Glasvegas, 101,000
DJ Khaled – We Global, 72,000
Motörhead - Motörizer, 61,880
All That Remains - Overcome, 44,500
TV On The Radio - Dear Science, 44,000
The Streets - Everything Is Borrowed, 41,000

New Releases 9/30
01 T.I. - Paper Trail, 569,361
02 Jennifer Hudson, 217,720
03 Robin Thicke - Something Else, 137,204
04 James Taylor - Covers, 94,669
11 Ben Folds - Way To Normal, 40,200
23 Trivium - Shogun, 23,733
48 Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God, 11,525
50 Soundtrack - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, 11,607
53 Ani DiFranco - Red Letter Year, 10,654
101 Bleeding Through - Declaration, 5,796

Current totals:
05 Metallica - Death Magnetic, 1,045,221
20 Kings Of Leon - Only By The Night, 100,859
30 Coldplay - Viva La Vida, 1,792,991
38 TV On The Radio - Dear Science, 47,850
55 Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue, 30,805
60 M.I.A. - Kala, 344,739
71 Cold War Kids - Loyalty To Loyalty, 30,929
84 Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation, 20,921
174 Fleet Foxes, 90,123

so besides the two big obvious blockbusters (Lil Wayne and then Coldplay) at the top, what are the highest selling albums in the US so far this year?

I'm assuming there's a typo in there somewhere between Amon Amarth and Nick and Norah.

Dragonforce – Ultra Beatdown, 111,620

guitar hero effect in effect ^^

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, 364,380

wow didn't know nick sold this much!

That's worldwide sales. The worldwidealbums.net link above will show all the top selling albums worldwide. I can't find any U.S.-only totals. Nielsen/Soundscan is pretty protective of their info. The top ten is published every January by Scoop Marketing. As a journalist working on an article, one could ask them for a top 500 and see what happens.

yeah, i know that list is worldwide and there might not be firm data til the end of the year, but y'know, maybe anecdotally maybe we can figure out what the other big sellers are after Wayne and Coldplay. Miley, Jonas Brothers? it seems like so many big artists sold below expectations this year or only had one big single (Mariah, Madonna, Usher) that I'm not sure if they'd still be best sellers for the year overall or get lost in the shuffle.

Go find the U.S. Billboard threads in the Chart Analysis section of the UK Mix board, and you can glean the top sellers from the Top 200 list. http://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=5

Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eryum Vid Spilum End, 99,860

wow i didn't know they were that big. (heck they need it right now..)

02 Duffy - Rockferry, 3,604,320

who or what is this?

http://brooster.photodigitation.com/images/Duffy_Patrick_001.jpg

no because patrick duffy would name his album rockyacht because he's straight class

Where do you get this numbers from?

02 Duffy - Rockferry, 3,604,320

who or what is this?

― rent, Friday, 10 October 2008 21:15 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Disney Radio-friendly Winehouse

here is something on Radiohead's In Rainbows:

http://musically.com/blog/2008/10/15/exclusive-warner-chappell-reveals-radioheads-in-rainbows-pot-of-gold/

The publisher will also confirm that Radiohead had made more money before ‘In Rainbows’ was physically released than they made in total on the previous album ‘Hail To the Thief’. It should be pointed out that Radiohead’s existing digital income was of course low, because they had withheld licensing the likes of iTunes.

The topline figure, though, is that there were (more than) three million purchases of In Rainbows, including physical CDs, box-sets, and all downloads - including those from the band’s own website and from other digital music stores.

• The physical CD has sold 1.75 million to date and is still top 200 UK & US
• They sold 100k boxsets via W.A.S.T.E.

OK, here's a little something I put together based on this week's SoundScan...

total U.S. sales for the highest-selling 2008 releases:
Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III - 2,550,507
Coldplay - Viva La Vida - 1,810,072
Jack Johnson - Sleep Through The Static - 1,413,066
Leona Lewis - Spirit - 1,166,481
Metallica - Death Magnetic - 1,110,962
Mamma Mia soundtrack - 1,050,431
Usher - Here I Stand - 1,041,761
Camp Rock soundtrack - 1,034,395
Jonas Brothers - Little Bit Longer - 992,689
Miley Cyrus - Breakout - 953,240

total U.S. sales (not just 2008) for 2006-7 releases still on the Billboard 200 this week:
Daughtry - Daughtry - 4,249,964
Alicia Keys - As I Am - 3,609,083
Taylor Swift - Taylor Swift - 3,467,297
The Eagles - Long Road Out Of Eden - 3,100,951
Linkin Park - Minutes To Midnight - 2,579,269
Carrie Underwood - Carnival Ride - 2,367,669
John Mayer - Continuum - 2,266,165
Kid Rock - Rock N Roll Jesus - 2,190,298
Rascall Flatts - Still Feels Good - 2,085,552
Maroon 5 - It Won't Be Soon Before Long - 2,010,722

so the best sellers of '08 would be some composite of those 2 lists, depending on how much those older releases sold this year alone.

To put things in perspective, Rolling Stone published rough sales figures for their http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938174/the_rs_500_greatest_albums_of_all_time";>500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. In nearly 40 years, Astral Weeks sold only 500,000. Velvet Underground and Nico only 311,000. A Love Supreme, Funhouse, Remain In Light, Marquee Moon, Closer, Ziggy Stardust, Hunky Dory, Low, Trout Mask Replica, Horses, The Harder They Come, Never Mind The Bollocks, Natty Dread, New York Dolls, all under 500,000. Loveless sold 225,000.

I think these are US only figures. I would guess that Ziggy sold double that in the UK alone.

Well, it was certified Gold in the US in 1974. Which is 500,000 sales. I imagine a few more copies have been sold since then.

yeah, that is a little suspect...maybe it's just numbers from the SoundScan era, which would totally skew the numbers on most of the albums on that list.

ok yeah those RS figures are totally fucked...they put Dark Side Of The Moon at 6.3 million, but it's been certified 15 times platinum in the U.S. alone.

If it were a smaller magazine, I'd guess intern fuck-up, but one would imagine RS has decent fact-checking

And if it's just the SoundScan numbers, that's a massively dumb oversight.

Yeah, also Never Mind the Bollocks went platinum eventually. I remember that being a news story because it took 20 years, I think.

I'm wondering if there's any accurate count of album sales...for decades labels counted units shipped as sold, and record stores got various incentives for inflating sales figures.

yeah, there's always gonna be a margin of error that you just can't eliminate...still, there's a difference between getting as close as you can with the available data, and just being flat-out wrong.

for decades labels counted units shipped as sold apart from when they had to pay royalties, that is...

Am I missing something with these figures? Are they really saying e.g. Ziggy Stardust sold under 500,000 since it was released? Cos that's obviously total bullshit.

The situation is that prior to the introduction of Nielsen SoundScan on March 1, 1991, RIAA certification was the only audited and verifiable system for tracking music sales in the U.S. It is still the only system capable of tracking 100% of sales, as it includes sales outlets Nielsen misses. The big caveat is that their reporting is inconsistent. They only give data since the last certification. From what I understand, often of times an album that was certified gold in the 70s may go platinum later, but no one cares enough to bother with it, unless the artist or label requests the certification.

So RS gave the data that was available, but did not bother to qualify with information on the last time it was certified. Probably because most people don't care, and it would confuse others. One thing they cannot do is just give an estimate. It would be nice if RIAA would produce a database of shipments up until 1991. Even better yet, do their best to figure out the number of returns and subtract those to get closer to the actual sales.

As far as I know, Nielsen Soundscan isn't in the pocket of the RIAA or any other record companies, and their yearly press releases published by Scoop marketing every January seem pretty straightforward. I know that not all retailers participated in SoundScan in the beginning, but it's probably covered pretty well by now.

2007 U.S. Music Purchases Exceed 1.4 Billion
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_Jan_3/ai_n27488394

New Releases 10/7
03 Rise Against - Appeal To Reason, 64,701
05 Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul, 53,075
06 Bob Dylan - Bootleg Vol 8, 49,813
32 Pretenders - Break Up The Concrete, 16,175
33 Tesla - Forever More, 16,123
47 Devin Tha Dude - Landing Gear, 10,835
53 Rachel Yamagata - Elephants Teeth Sinking Into, 9,614
93 The Clash - Live At Shea Stadium, 5,647
150 Deerhoof - Offend Maggie, 3,861
154 The Streets - Everything Is Borrowed, 3,755
179 Antony & The Johnsons - Another World EP, 3,336
180 Margot & The Nuclear So & So's - Not Animal, 3,311

It seems that the 7% drop mostly affects the pop, mainstream rap and soundtrack blockbusters.

How about compilations...???

The big marketing phenomenon of the late 80s and most of the 90s obviously doesn't benefit from downloading. But then, the companies may just act like "Now That's What I Call Music" never happened and go back to what things used to be before that again. No need to worry about the future of the album. Other than the compilation, that is....

New Releases 10/14
01 Kenny Chesney - Lucky Old Sun, 176,414
03 Ray LaMontagne - Gossip in the Grain, 60,476
07 Keane - Perfect Symmetry, 43,496
09 Lucinda Williams - Little Honey, 34,650
45 Unearth - March, 10,960
100 Between the Buried & Me - Colors, 5,437
123 Gojira - Way Of All Flesh, 4,213

These are still hanging in the top 100, with total sales:
54 M.I.A. - Kala, 362,169
83 TV On The Radio - Dear Science, 62,245
84 MGMT - Oracular Spectacular, 200,018
86 Fleet Foxes, 108,760

wasnt lucky old sun a brian wilson album?

nevermind, i guess it's a country album too. yuck

Yeah, and Kenny'll probably continue to outsell Brian too.

It's too soon to tell, but I'm quite interested to see how well Black Ice does. It's a certain #1, but with how many units?

As it happens, 784,000

the numbers are in: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/2008-us-music-purchases-exceed/story.aspx?guid={6335B083-3284-461F-A0C7-C018F0997DBA}&dist=msr_3

1. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (2.874 million)
2. Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (2.144 million)
3. Taylor Swift, Fearless (2.112 million)
4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesus (2.018 million)
5. AC/DC, Black Ice (1.915 million)
6. Taylor Swift (1.597 million)
7. Metallica, Death Magnetic (1.565 million)
8. T.I., Paper Trail (1.522 million)
9. Jack Johnson, Sleep Through the Static (1.492 million)
10. Beyoncé, I Am…Sasha Fierce, (1.459 million)

er that URL didn't work but you can follow the link from Idolator: http://idolator.com/5122211/lil-wayne-taylor-swift-do-their-part-to-save-the-music-industry

The full report:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/2008-US-Music-Purchases-bw-13947245.html

+Sales figures tracked by Christian SoundScan