Music Industry

Weekly Music Sales and Analysis: 05 November 2014

What a difference one superstar album release can make. Taylor Swift, the music industry thanks you.

Overall album sales are 18% over last week, which is great, but not nothing to keep year-to-day sales at -5%. (Hey, at least that number didn’t drop any lower!) Physical CD sales are down 5% with digital albums down 6% over last year. Meanwhile, digital tracks are down by 13%. Ms Smith can only do so much.

Taylor Swift’s 1989 debuted at #1 Top Albums chart with 107,000 units sold, more double of the previous best one week sales total in 2014. It is her highest one week sales total, surpassing the 93,000 units sold in week one of 2012’s Red. It is the highest first week sales total for any release since AC/DC’s Black Ice in 2008 (117,000) and is the highest first week sales total by a female artist since Shania Twain’s Up! in 2002. With 60,000 digital albums sold, it is the highest one week digital album total since SoundScan began tracking digital releases in 2005.

From there, we have country artist Sam Hunt’s debut album Montevallo at #2 with 5,300 units.  Sliding a little further, we find Ils Chantent Louvain at #5;. Then it gets a little weird when we find the reissue of Led Zeppelin’s IV lands at #7 with  3,500 units sold.

Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” remains at No. 1 on the Digital Songs chart with 14,000 downloads sold. This song isn’t going away anytime soon.

In the US, Talyor is on top with 1,289,000 albums, which is huge. She’s followed by the Now 52 compilation in second place (103,000), Sam Hunt at #3 (70,000), Barry Manilow (!!!) at #4 (51,000), Chris Tomplin (#5, 35,000) and Black Veil Brides (#9, 30,000)

And back to Meghan Trainer:  “All About That Bass” holds at the top of the Weekly Combined Stream Playlist for the ninth straight week, with 11.8 million streams,

All figures courtesy Nielsen SoundScan

All figures courtesy Nielson SounScan.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 37980 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

One thought on “Weekly Music Sales and Analysis: 05 November 2014

  • Do you have sales in this week by FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE and BOBBY BAZINI??? for the week of 29th october
    Thanks

    Reply

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