CDs: Where Is The Love?
This week’s Nielsen SoundScan wrap covers results through the week ending Feb. 22. After last week’s love-filled Valentines Day/post-Grammy bump, overall sales slid, dropping 13% week to week. For country, the story was more pronounced as the format’s scans fell a full 26%.
The Top 75 Current Country list accounted for a total of 358k units, about half of country’s total sales for the week. YTD, country album sales are off 14.8% which compares closely with all-genre scans which are off YTD by 12%.
Looking at 2009 country sales, the top selling albums are Swift (560k), Plant/Krauss (132k), Swift (128k), Sugarland (121k), Dierks Bentley (115k), Zac Brown Band (108k), Darius Rucker (105k), Rascal Flatts (84k), Jamey Johnson (82k), and Lady Antebellum (69k). By label, a quick glance shows Big Machine (Swift & Swift), Universal (Sugarland, Johnson) each with two entries in the YTD Top Ten best sellers and Capitol (Bentley, Rucker, Lady A) rocks with three.
Digital albums continue to grow as a percentage of total country album sales, now hitting 11.9% of total country sales. In 2008 they were only 6.8% of total country sales.
Click Here to see the CD Release Calendar. Next up are CDs from Jake Owen, Jack Ingram and Martina McBride.
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Imagine if you removed Taylor Swift from those sales numbers. I mean at the end of the day she’s a pop star. What’s next a Jonas Brothers Country release?
And as far as digital numbers growing, Of course they are growing, most country consumers just bought their first ipod in the last year.
What happened to Sony not one album in 2009 Top sellers so far? Oh how the mighty have fallen…