January 09 Sales Story
Almost escaping notice, January 2009 has trailed off into obscurity, but the short story regarding country sales continues to be, “more of the same.” Top 75 Current Country sales fell short of the 300k mark again this week reaching about 295,000 units. Year-to-date country sales are now down 20.5%. One bright spot is country digital album sales which are up 36.1%, but not enough to make up for the lost revenue from physical sales. Pat Green launched a new CD this week which scanned 18,195 units, enough to take the No. 2 spot behind Taylor Swift’s 55,102 units. Green also kicked off his headline Jaegermeister Country tour in Atlanta last week, which will visit 25 major markets in the next three months.
It may be too early to express certainty, but it appears that country digital album downloads are increasing as a percentage of total country album sales. Last year country digital albums averaged about 7.4% of total country album sales, for ’09 the number has jumped to 12.7%.
On the pop side, Bruce Springsteen leveraged his Super Bowl performance to debut at No. 1 with 223,741 scans, edging Swift out of the top spot which she owned for eight consecutive weeks. Overall album sales are down 12% YTD.
On the horizon we have debuts coming this week from Dierks Bentley and Aaron Tippin.
- Exclusive: Meghan Trainor Entices Nashville On Untouchable Tour - August 8, 2016
- Weekly Register: SoundScan Discounts Jay Z Promotion; 'The Voice' Reigns - June 26, 2013
- Weekly Register: An Unstoppable Freight Train - June 19, 2013
The horizon is here for Dierks Bentley’s new album. Feel That Fire is spawning a lot of blazing clichés this week, and all of them are right! This is one hot CD that is going to go places – read that up! Dierks has said he wanted to stay in the moment, as well as have fun. He’s done it with style and grace. Style with the Warren Brothers in the title cut, grace with the incomparable Patti Griffin in Beautiful World, Better Believer, co-written with Rivers Rutherford, and Pray, written with Rodney Crowell. For fun you can’t beat Sideways and Here She Comes. My favorite today is I Wanna Close Your Eyes, but tomorrow it may change to that motorcycle revving Life on the Run with Mike McCready (Pearl Jam). You may remember McCready’s previous contribution with Bentley on Distant Shore on his first CD. Feel that Fire? You bet.