With 56.42% of reports in, the music business sucks. If Idol is on life-support, the doctors are about to talk to the music biz’s next of kin about organ donation. With the number 2 album set to sell 27-30K, there is little room for optimism. It’s spring! The music biz should be starting to re-awaken after the Jan/Feb doldrums of Christmas-credit-card-bill-shock austerity. To top it off, the Country music division just ran one of their award ceremonies which should have lifted sales (it did, but not enough to save this chart). Sigh. No wonder The Voice doesn’t worry about the winners’ careers – soon nobody in the biz will have one.
The one bright spot in the chart, is Frozen, as usual. Frozen is easily and without a doubt going to spend its tenth week on the top of the chart. It recently became only the 20th album in the SoundScan era to spend more than 8 weeks at the top of the chart and it should pass the 2M mark in sales with this SS report. It will also likely sell well this week due to Easter on Sunday.
HDD has 5 Seconds to Mars (former opener for One Direction) spending their second week at number 2, but Billboard gives that slot to debuting SoMo (R&B/Pop). Pharrell Williams has set up camp at the middle of the top 10 and this week he’s sitting at 4th. MercyMe (Christian Rock) and Black Label Society (Metal) are debuting at 5th and 6th respectively. Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line and Eric Church lead the re-surging Country artists at 7th, 8th and 9th. Lorde owns the top 10 spot and defends the slot again this week.
The only reality singing show contestant on the top 50 estimation chart is One Direction at 43rd. We also have a couple of Voice judges showing up – Shakira at 16th and Blake Shelton at 23rd. James Durbin released an album last week and does not appear in the chart. It could mean that he’s out of the top 50, but sometimes these Indie acts don’t show up on the HDD charts, but do on the BB charts. He’s likely not going to match his last album sales, though. Few do.
CHART DATE: 04/14/2014
LAST UPDATE: 04/14/2014 14:57:39
NOW IN: 56.42%
LW TW artist / album label sales index
1 1 FROZEN SOUNDTRACK 69,779
2 2 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER SHE LOOKS SO PERFECT – EP 22,801
— 3 SOMO SOMO 20,948
8 4 PHARRELL WILLIAMS G I R L 17,665
— 5 MERCYME WELCOME TO THE NEW 17,543
— 6 BLACK LABEL SOCIETY CATACOMBS OF THE BLACK VATICAN 15,471
13 7 LUKE BRYAN CRASH MY PARTY 12,745
17 8 FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE HERE’S TO THE GOOD TIMES 11,148
18 9 ERIC CHURCH THE OUTSIDERS 10,406
10 10 LORDE PURE HEROINE 8,564
15 11 NOW 49 VARIOUS ARTISTS 8,032
…
5 16 SHAKIRA SHAKIRA. 6,175
…
28 23 BLAKE SHELTON WBASED ON A TRUE STORY 5,053
…
— 43 ONE DIRECTION MIDNIGHT MEMORIES 2,806
…
31 50 JOSH THOMPSON TURN IT UP 1,792
