Radiohead’s In Rainbows took the top spot on this week’s album-sales chart in its first official week of being available in stores; street-date violations during the Christmas-to-New Year’s week had resulted in it debuting at No. 156 last week. 122,000 people ponied up for the album, and 28,000 of those sales were for its digital version. (I wonder what the percentage of people who bought the “pay what you like” version of the album in addition its legit digital release was?)
Biggest Debuts: The Juno soundtrack, which is stuffed to the gills with songs from Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson, entered at No. 8, selling 38,000 copies–almost all digital, because the CD actually came out yesterday. It’s one of five soundtracks in the top 20. (Did you know that people are actually buying the soundtrack to Alvin & The Chipmunks, by the way? No, really.)
Notable Jumps: Not really much to report here, as pretty much every album in the top 50 except for In Rainbows experienced major dropoffs in sales. The Once soundtrack did jump from No. 74 to No. 38 because its week-to-week sales totals only went down by five percent, though!
Dropping Off: Sales overall went down 37.5% from last week. But on the bright side, there was actually one other album (Alicia Keys’ As I Am) that sold in the six-figure range!
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: OK, it fell from No. 3 to No. 58, but still: 15,000 people bought Josh Groban’s Noel last week. Fifteen thousand. That’s a higher one-week sales total than Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad, Feist’s The Reminder, and Curtis, in case you were wondering. However! That sales figure is much lower than the one-week sales enjoyed last week by Elliot Yamin’s Target-only holiday EP, which enjoyed a 112% sales gain and vaulted up to No. 32 (from No. 123). Either the deep discount enticed people, or guess there are still traditionalists out there who believe in the whole “12 Days Of Christmas” concept!
The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Radiohead, In Rainbows (122,000)
2. Alicia Keys, As I Am (112,000)
3. Mary J. Blige, Growing Pains (89,000)
4. Now 26 (54,000)
5. Taylor Swift (47,000)
6. Chris Brown, Exclusive (41,000)
7. Garth Brooks, Ultimate Hits (39,000)
8. Juno soundtrack (38,000)
9. Colbie Caillat, Coco (38,000)
10. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden (36,000)
11. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (35,000)
12. Fergie, The Dutchess (33,000)
13. Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack (33,000)
14. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (32,000)
15. OneRepublic, Dreaming Out Loud (32,000)
16. Led Zeppelin, Mothership (31,000)
17. Lupe Fiasco, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool (31,000)
18. Sweeney Todd soundtrack (31,000)
19. Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (30,000)
20. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (29,000)
holy crap Radiohead in Tampa??
(Did you know that people are actually buying the soundtrack to Alvin & The Chipmunks, by the way? No, really.)
I chose to ignore this in last week’s “100 and Single” column, but contrary to my prediction of a couple of weeks ago, not only is “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” not gone yet, but three other Chipmunks songs debuted on the Hot 100 last week, including their cover of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.” Imagine, if you can, the existence of people who went out of their way to download the Chipmunks version of that song.
So the early Juno debut is due entirely to digital sales, not stores violating the street date? Who had it available a week early, just iTunes?
This combination of soundtracks all over the chart and aforementioned anemic sales figures makes me really optimistic for The Wire soundtrack’s potential chart debut next week.
@GovernmentNames: Good catch. The answer to your question is, both: Billboard would have held Juno back from the big chart for another week, but they had data from retailers breaking street date on it, which made it eligible for this week’s chart, which meant all the digital sales counted, too. The Billboard story says 99% of Juno’s chart points in this first week come from digital sales. Next week, there’ll probably be more terrestrial sales, and the figure might even out.
Those sales figures are just anemic. I remember when bands like Yo La Tengo would crack the Billboard Top 200 with 30k first week sales or something.
No Groban, no credibility.
Hey Maura,
Nasty Man just announced tour cities (not dates or venues yet):
[reaxmusic.com]
@Rabi: Yeah, I saw that. They really know how to milk the Google Blog Search mojo for all it’s worth, don’t they?