Idol Sales News – Week Ending 11/02/14

The biggest news in sales this week has got to be Taylor Swift selling a ginormous amount of music this week and it also news that it isn’t news. She has become such a consistent big seller in an era which doesn’t boast a lot of big sales. She has managed to cross-over from Country to Pop and stay relevant – Pop is a genre where today’s hottest act generally becomes tomorrow’s “So Yesterday”, but Taylor transcends that. She has built her own pocket of the industry.

Billboard reports some of her achievements:
– “1989” officially sells 1.287M units – BTW that exceeds what many felt were too high post-release predictions by industry pundits at 1M – those pundits have proven to be fairly optimistic lately
– In that one week of sales, “1989” becomes the only album released in 2014 that has sold 1 million records. And it’s November (next highest is Coldplay’s “Ghost Stories” at 745K)
– One week of sales were also enough to make “1989” the second best-selling album of 2014 behind that megabeast “Frozen” (3.2M)
– “1989” is her fourth number one album (the other three were Red (in 2012), Speak Now (2010) and Fearless (2008))
– “1989” makes her the first artist to sell one million copies in a week of three different albums (other two were Red (in 2012) and Speak Now (2010))
– While other artists tend to peak with their first or second successful album, Taylor just keeps growing in sales:
———Taylor Swift (2006): 39K
———Fearless (2008): 592K
———Speak Now (2010): 1.047M
———Red (2012): 1.208M
———1989 (2014): 1.287M
– “1989” is just the 19th album to sell 1M in a week during the SoundScan era (starting in 1991)
– Of the last four albums to sell 1M in a week, three were from Taylor Swift.

Here is where “1989” first week sales slot in:
1 2000 *NSYNC “No Strings Attached” 2,415,859
2 2001 *NSYNC “Celebrity” 1,879,955
3 2000 Eminem “The Marshall Mathers LP” 1,760,049
4 2000 Backstreet Boys “Black & Blue” 1,591,191
5 2002 Eminem “The Eminem Show” 1,321,799
6 2000 Britney Spears “Oops!… I Did It Again” 1,319,193
7 2014 Taylor Swift “1989” 1,287,000
8 2012 Taylor Swift “Red” 1,208,000
9 2005 50 Cent “The Massacre[I]” 1,140,638
10 1999 Backstreet Boys “Millennium” 1,133,505

* notice how most of the other big numbers were clustered in the 1999-2002 range when there were really no other options to get the singles you wanted than to buy the album? You could buy expensive CD singles (about half the cost of an album)

Taylor Swift is remarkable. And she’s 25.

In other news, she sold a lot of singles this week, but with complete my album and instant grat rules, she’ll likely miss the number one spot on the Hot 100. Meghan is a beast with the streaming and youtube views, so she could top the chart again. Meanwhile, Taylor pulled all of her songs from the streaming giant “Spotify” and here is Time’s view on that (it’s an interesting discussion of an industry that has seen massive changes in the last 25 years).

Other than Taylor, here are some relevant sales news:
– Now 52 is the second best selling album of the week with 99K in estimated sales – it includes a track by the last X-Factor US winners, Alex and Sierra (“Scarecrow”).
– Pentatonix’s second Christmas album “That’s Christmas to Me” slides to 26th in its second week with 14K in sales. It seems like there are no other Christmas albums ahead of it, so it should get it’s second week at the top of the Holiday album chart. Didn’t it seem like last year big names were releasing Christmas albums every week? This year, not so much.
– Susan Boyle (Britain’s Got Talent runner-up) is 31st with her second week of “Hope” (11K)
– Now 51 features a track featuring X-Factors Cher Lloyd – 44th with 7.6K
– Emblem3 – X-Factor US – releases another EP “Forever Together” (aren’t they not together anymore?) – 48th with 6.9K

girlygirl:

Pentatonix THAT’S CHRISTMAS TO ME 11,518 -64% 43,784 tot sales
Susan Boyle HOPE 11,002 -44% 30,672 tot sales
Emblem3 FOREVER TOGETHER EP 6,736 (debut)
Home Free FULL OF CHEER 6,108 (debut; tot sales 6,109
Chase Rice IGNITE THE NIGHT 4,867 +17% 107,124 tot sales
Jennifer Hudson JHUD 2,934 -23% 50,543 tot sales
Pentatonix PTX,VOL.III 2,862 -26% 69,445 tot sales
Jackie Evancho AWAKENING 2,468 -14% 41,566 tot sales
One Direction MIDNIGHT MEMORIES 2,386 +18% 1,426,041 tot sales
Lindsey Stirling SHATTER ME 2,383 -24% 179,358 tot sales

ptebwwong:

Roughstock Single Sales

Place Artist Track Sales Total
2 Carrie Underwood Something In The Water 34,000 282,000
5 Blake Shelton Neon Light 26,000 333,000
13 Brad Paisley Perfect Storm 18,000 130,000
14 Keith Urban Somewhere In My Car 17,000 251,000
15 Chase Rice Ready Set Roll 16,000 906,000
18 RaeLynn God Made Girls 13,000 152,000
20 Miranda/Carrie Somethin’ Bad 13,000 839,000
27 Scotty McCreery Feelin’ It 9,000 206,000
30 Chase Rice Ride 9,000 48,000

http://roughstock.com/news/2014/11/30516-country-musics-top-30-digital-singles-november-5-2014/

Roughstock Album Sales

Top 200 Artist Album Sales Total
44 Blake Shelton Bringing Back The Sunshine 9,000 173,000
63 Home Free Full Of Cheer 6,100 6,100
82 Miranda Lambert Platinum 4,600 497,700
— Keith Urban Fuse 1,600 401,500
— Scotty McCreery See You Tonight 700 254,400

http://roughstock.com/news/2014/11/30518-country-album-chart-report-november-5-2014/

About Kirsten 3060 Articles
Kirsten has had a long love affair with numbers. Marry that with her love of cheese and the Numbers Threads at MJs were born.