Gulf Between Country Haves & Have-Nots Widens

The sales gulf between country’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen. For the week ended 6/14/09 the Top 10 on country’s Top 75 Current Album chart accounted for 58.5% of the week’s charted sales, a total 404,523 units. In fact, the Top 6 titles rack up 45%! This means that sales are extremely concentrated among a small number of projects and artists.

Highest sales by a single artist is Taylor Swift, with two Top 10 titles represented at 35,000 and 12,169, respectively. The Hannah Montana soundtrack, whose inclusion in the country chart still hackles some Nashville record execs, sold 46,100 remaining in the chart’s Top position.

Daryl Worley (3,187) and Tracy Lawrence (2,270) had new CD debuts this week. Debuting with less than a 1,000 units were John Anderson (965), Justin Moore (964; digital only) and Trailer Choir (952).

In the male solo artist division Kenny Chesney’s Greatest Hits (31,607), now in its fourth week fell back one position to No. 3. Jason Aldean stayed steady at No. 6 (19,140) and Keith Urban slid back two spots to No. 9 (13,920).

Overview: Most metrics are little changed. Overall industry sales are down 14% YTD and country sales are now down 4%. Digital country album sales account for 11.5% of total country album sales.