Tag Archive for: Sales

Post Holiday Sales Drag Totals

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Let’s view our SoundScan update this week from 10,000 feet and then drill down into a few areas for a closer look. The addition of the Hannah Montana soundtrack to the country albums chart, plus recent releases from Rascal Flatts, Jason Aldean and Keith Urban worked wonders to prop what earlier in the year was a soggy Y/Y sales comparison. For the week ended 5/17/09, country album sales are down a mere 3.9%. This compares quite favorably with the overall music business which is down 13%. (The controversial addition of the Disney star’s CD, which now accounts for 5.6% of 2009 country album sales, greatly helped improve country’s tally.)

Just released impact titles in the marketplace include a Greatest Hits outing from Kenny Chesney and a hip-hop offering from Eminem both hoping to take advantage of the long holiday weekend’s extra shopping time. Predictions based upon first day sales, according to insiders place Chesney in the mid-80s range and the gangsta at a whopping 600k+.

Counting Country
Not unexpectedly, post Mother’s Day country sales dropped off, about 18% wk/wk despite a debut from Steve Earle which scanned 17,839 units.

Digital consumer behavior is fast becoming a key observation area. Despite recent CMA research which finds that about 50% of the rabid countryphile core do not have Internet at home, country digital CD sales have grown Y/Y by a significant 62% hitting about 1.85 million units YTD. Last year, fans purchased 6.9% of the total country albums sold in digital format. This year that percentage has mushroomed to 11.6%.

In the digital track department leading country downloads included—Miley Cyrus “Climb” (73,754 units); Taylor Swift “You Belong…” (36,213); Miley Cyrus “HoeDown Throwdown” (34,724); Zac Brown Band “Whatever It Is” (34,423); and Brad Paisley “Then” 30,257.

Key: Y/Y—year over year; wk./wk.—week over week; YTD—year-to-date.

Swift Rules; Owen Debuts At No. 2 (3/4/09)

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So far this year, as Taylor Swift sells, so goes the country music world. With that scientific axiom as one’s basic assumption it is therefore no surprise that the precocious teen again this week topped both the Top 200 Current Albums all genre list and the Top 75 Current Country list with 73,174 units scanned of Fearless. Swift’s first CD landed at No. 6 (country) with 13,613 units. These two numbers effectively mean her sales accounted for about 12% of all country sales (722k units) this past week.

Jake Owen’s sophomore set Easy Does It debuted at No. 2 on this week’s chart with 23,187 units. Owen’s single “Don’t Think I Can’t Love You” is currently No. 13 on the Country Breakout airplay list and moving upward. The singer/songwriter recently earned ACM nominations for Vocal Event and Top New Male Vocalist.

YTD Country music sales continue to lag about 14% behind the same period last year, however country digital album sales (contained in the above totals) have increased a strong 46%. Catalog (trending downward) now accounts for 50% of total country sales.

SoundScan still doesn’t break out hot digital track sales by genre. (Editor: A spokesperson recently said this should begin happening later this year. Hopefully it will be in place before SoundScan numbers become completely irrelevant to the music industry metrics of success.) Anyway, top country digital download tracks include Taylor Swift “Love Story” (72,146) and “White Horse (35,656);  Zac Brown Band “Chicken Fried” (31,101); Jason Aldean “She’s Country” (24,752); and Toby Keith “God Love Her” (18,537). No. 1 on the Hot Digital Tracks chart for the week was Flo Rida “Right Round” with 334,312 units downloaded.

CDs: Where Is The Love?

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Post Valentines Day, where is the Love?

Post Valentines Day, 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.

Bentley Lands At No. 1; Plus Latest Country Certifications

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Dierks Bentley’s fourth studio album, Feel That Fire, tops the new SoundScan country albums chart with first-week sales of over 71,000 units. It racked up enough scans to also secure the No. 3 spot on the all-genre chart.

The lead single and title track recently finished a multi-week run at the pinnacle of MusicRow’s Country Breakout Chart. Catch Bentley tonight (2/11), performing “Life On The Run” on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He follows that with a two-week Canadian run with Brad Paisley through the end of February.

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Darius Rucker’s debut country album on Capitol Records Nashville has been certified Gold. Released in September 2008, Learn To Live debuted at No. 1 on the country albums charts with over 60,000 units. Since then it has remained in the Top 15 and produced the two-week No. 1 single “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It,” and the follow-up Top 10 and climbing hit “It Won’t Be Like This For Long.”

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Sugarland was in Los Angeles rehearsing for the Grammys last week when the duo was surprised with Platinum plaques for their latest album Love On The Inside, released in July 2008. The Mercury Nashville pair captured their first Grammy Sunday night for Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals for “Stay.” Nettles also won Best Country Song for the self-penned hit which has garnered ACM, CMA and CMT awards, and sold over 980,000 digital copies. The duo’s next single will be “It Happens.”

(L-R): Manager Gail Gellman, Kristian Bush, Jennifer Nettles, NARAS Pres. Neil Portnow

(L-R): Manager Gail Gellman, Kristian Bush, Jennifer Nettles, NARAS Pres. Neil Portnow

January 09 Sales Story

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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.

RIAA Reveals Year-End Stats

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Only three albums released in 2008 were certified multi-platinum in the same year, according to the RIAA’s year-end tally. The year’s top certifications—all double platinum—went to rapper Lil Wayne (Tha Carter, Vol. 3), Brit rockers Coldplay (Viva La Vida), and metal masters AC/DC (Black Ice).

Lil Wayne’s June release reached double-Platinum prestige within only one month. AC/DC’s first commercial outing in eight years debuted in late October and hit the 2x Platinum mark in November. Meanwhile, Coldplay’s album came out in June and reached Platinum by August.

Twenty-one albums released last year received Platinum certification in 2008, with Sugarland and Toby Keith being the only Country crooners in the group. Helping the Mercury Nashville duo move a million units was its third release Love on the Inside. For Keith it was That Don’t Make Me a Bad Guy, released in October on Show Dog Nashville and certified Platinum in December. That pushed his career total to more than 23 million albums sold since his 1993 debut.

As for December RIAA certifications, Faith Hill’s Joy to the World was certified Gold, and Miranda Lambert earned a Gold Single and Gold Mastertone for “Gunpowder & Lead.”

Country 2008: A Year End Report

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Click to download report.

The country music record business was especially hard hit as the previous year’s drop of 16.3% rose to 24% in 2008. Actual country album sales (physical and digital) toppled from 62.7 to 47.6 million, a new all time low under the SoundScan era.

Country 2008: A Year End Report asks questions and presents much of the past year’s key data.

Country By Numbers (11/26/08)

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As the industry heads home for a dose of Thanksgiving family and fowl to replenish its fortitude reservoir, it leaves Black Friday week sales in the hands of retailers nationwide. During last year’s comparable holiday week the Country Top 75 hit a healthy 1.53 million units. This year expectations are more reserved with some insiders hoping to at least break the one million unit mark. Can we do it? To a large degree it may depend upon how aggressive retailers get with loss leader pricing. Will we see $3.99 digital album downloads again from Amazon and perhaps other sites? How low will markdowns go on physical product?

The week ending 11/23/08 was ruled by debuts from Zac Brown Band (No. 3; 43,531), Blake Shelton (No. 7; 26,264) and Randy Houser (No. 21; 7,041). Also pivotal was the natural second week falloff in numbers for the Taylor Swift CD which retained its Top spot on the Current country Top 75, but dropped 63% to 217,209 units. [private]Faith Hill’s Christmas offering leapt 83% wk/wk to the No. 2 country chart position stuffing its stocking with 46,284 scans. Other holiday offerings showing signs of jingle bell fever are the Elvis Christmas Duets (up 135% to 29,000), Julianne Hough Sounds Of The Season (up 115% to 22,460) and George Strait Classic Christmas (up 75% to 6,823).

Zooming out to the big picture, country sales Y/Y are off 23.3% with marketshare leveling off to 10.7% of the overall U.S. music industry. Interestingly, the share of digital country album sales is averaging 8%, up from about 5% at this time last year. However, country digital sales still only account for about 5.3% of overall digital album sales, a number below its marketshare, showing that country buyers are markedly less inclined to go online than total market buyers. [/private]