Every week, I pore over the digital-album charts–which lists the 50 albums that sold the most virtual copies on sites like iTunes, eMusic, and Amazon MP3–in an effort to figure out what new albums have high percentages of digital sales, and to see what older albums are having odd online sales spikes. Yesterday, I noticed that Amazon MP3′s Twitter is being updated with the store’s daily cheap-album deals, which is a big help for someone who wants to figure out why certain albums that are old in Internet time (like, sometimes even 10 years old!) are popping back on the chart. A few attempts at correlation after the jump.
Death Cab For Cutie, We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes: Sold 2,000 copies week ending Sept. 14 (No. 37, up “999%”–the week prior, sales were in the double digits); marked down to $1.99 on Sept. 11
Soundgarden, Superunknown: Sold 2,000 digital copies week ending Sept. 14 (No. 36, up 866%); marked down to $1.99 on Sept. 13
Beck, Modern Guilt : I’m not sure if this album was a direct beneficiary of Amazon’s deep discounting, but digital sales for Guilt doubled week-to-week (No. 25, 2,700 sold) during the same timeframe that a Twitter announcement announced an unnamed album by the chameleonic singer selling for $5.
Albums that didn’t chart as a result of Amazon’s deep discounting, and thus didn’t sell more than 1,500 copies: Bill Cosby, Himself; Desmond Dekker, Israelites; Kiss, Greatest Kiss; the White Stripes, Elephant. (Although the last album was marked down Sept. 14, the day the chart ends. Which means we could see a spike in its online totals next week.)
Side note: Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable: With Love was marked down to $3.99 on Sept. 9, the day the album’s sequel came out. There was no chart-worthy uptick there, although the new album sold only 1,600 digital copies (No. 47) out of 27,000 total sales (No. 19). So there’s one demographic that isn’t running for the virtual aisles just yet.
Amazon MP3 [Twitter]
[NB: An earlier version of this post appeared on my personal blog yesterday, for those of you who may be wondering if you're experiencing double vision. And yes, I do "relax" in weird ways.]
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for that.
Let me just preempt this chart-related question now: None of these albums would be eligible to reappear on the Billboard 200, because they’re all more than two years old and hence fail to meet BB’s criteria for “current” albums.
However, tracking old albums like this is what the Top Catalog Albums chart is for — so conceivably a big one-week Amazon seller could appear there. But an old record needs to sell somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000ish copies to make the lower rungs of the top 40 list Billboard publishes. None of the above appears to qualify, unless these same titles also sold another grand or two in physical copies the same week.
Two bucks for one of the best albums ever? Sounds like a no brainer to me.
@cassidy2099:
I used re-buy that album every 2-3 years just so I could get a copy that doesn’t skip all over the place during “Like Suicide.” Finally found an old vinyl copy to solve the problem.
Good to see that hopefully some of Death Cab’s newer fans are getting their hands on their best album legally.
On a sidenote, whither Kim Thayil? The guy was a huge part of what made Soundgarden great, and he’s hardly been heard of in ten years!
@sicksteanein: Agreed. Plus, I always thought the name of the album was awesome. I can’t really put into words why, it just is.