Country music continues it’s stronghold on the Billboard album charts this week. For the third consecutive week, the genre scores a chart-topping debut. This week’s chart-topper is the latest record from Toby Keith. Everyone’s favorite Dixie Chick-basher scores the #1 album with “Bullets in the Gun”. Unfortunately, it also starts with what’s probably the lowest total for a chart-topper in October EVER, scanning just under 71,000 units. Nevertheless, Toby follows Kenny Chesney (now #2) and Zac Brown Band (#5) to the chart summit.
There are only three debuts in the Top Ten this week. Newcomer Bruno Mars parlays a chart-topping hit and a “Saturday Night Live” appearance into a #3 debut with “Doo-Wops and Hooligans”, while “rapper” Waka Flocka Flame starts at #6 with “Flockaveli”. .
The remainder of the Top 20 remains pretty static. Both David Archuleta and Faith Evans must be wondering where their fans went after their first week scan totals were in. While the former “Idol” runner-up’s debut effort sold over 3/4 of a million copies, his latest effort, “The Other Side of Down”, starts at unlucky #13 with a paltry 24,000 units sold. Meanwhile, R&B singer Evans starts two spots behind with her latest, “Something About Faith”. Her previous studio album, “The First Lady” (released five LONG years ago), started at #2 and went on to sell over 500,000 copies. I hope they’ve saved their money, ’cause it doesn’t look like they’re going to repeat those sales figures anytime soon.
It’s amazing when you look at how much the industry has shrunk even since Evans’ last album came out in 2005. In that year, about 100 albums sold 500,000 or more copies. With 12 weeks left in the year, we’ll be lucky if we get to half that total. As of this past Monday, only 23 albums have crossed the 500,000 mark. Another two (Rihanna’s “Rated R” and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”) will likely cross that threshold next week. Unless people start rolling out in droves to buy albums, we’ll be looking at quite the disappointing year from a sales perspective. A shame, too, since there’s been quite a bit of noteworthy music released so far in 2010.
Next week, expect Lil Wayne (who drops from 2-16 this week with “I Am Not a Human Being”) to crown the chart as “Being” is finally released physically. Country will fall short this week, although not by much, as Darius Rucker is scheduled for a Top 5 debut as well. Thankfully, the October 19th release schedule contains four albums that could potentially score 6-figure debut sums: the new albums by Kings of Leon and Sugarland will certainly make it there, with the wild cards being another Rod Stewart standards album and a new Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana soundtrack.
This week’s Top 20 after the jump.
1) “Bullets in the Gun” Toby Keith
2) “Hemingway’s Whiskey” Kenny Chesney
3) “Doo Wops & Hooligans” Bruno Mars
4) “Recovery” Eminem
5) “You Get What You Give” Zac Brown Band
6) “Flockaveli” Waka Flocka Flame
7) “A Thousand Suns” Linkin Park
8) “Teenage Dream” Katy Perry
9) “Passion, Pain & Pleasure” Trey Songz
10) “A Year Without Rain” Selena Gomez & the Scene
11) “Hands All Over” Maroon 5
12) “My World 2.0” Justin Bieber
13) “The Other Side of Down” David Archuleta
14) “Now That’s What I Call Music” Various Artists
15) “Something About Faith” Faith Evans
16) “I Am Not a Human Being” Lil Wayne
17) “There is a Hell; Believe Me, I’ve Seen It…” Bring Me the Horizon
18) “Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted” Gucci Mane
19) “Clapton” Eric Clapton
20) “Guitar Heaven” Santana
5 comments
GG says:
Oct 14, 2010
It”s amazing that only a few years after being in front of 20 million people weekly, the dude can only sell 20K. Look at that ratio. What a horrendous job in marketing they are doing to not take advantage of that audience size. The music industry in general is one of the most uncreative businesses as they watch album sales fall and yet they practice the same things that caused the fall of business. Anyone who doesn’t see that and only wants to blame file sharing has their head in the sand.
blerd says:
Oct 14, 2010
What do you think can be done differently?
I think the folks at “Idol” have a marketing issue as well. When you are looking for “idols” instead of “artists”, you wind up finding people who only make a splash for a brief period of time. The concept of artist development seems to only happen by accident (Clarkson) when it comes to “American Idol” contestants.
GG says:
Oct 14, 2010
I’m not a marketer. All I see is duplication of what hasn’t been working. No one is trying to reinvent the business. They’re just trying to make excuses.
The selling of records isn’t Idol’s responsibility though. Their responsibility is to draw ratings for Fox. That’s it. The label they are linked up with in turn has to take that artist and make them viable to sell records. The first album should be a gimmie based on them just being on Idol. But they’re even screwing that up now.
You’re right that “Idols” may not be “artists”, but you’re telling me that only talented artists sell records? Some of the most talented artists I listen to are terrible at selling records. I don’t think that’s the problem at all. Maybe when it comes to longevity, that will be an issue. Look at Fantasia. Idol got it right that time, and she can’t sell beans either.
blerd says:
Oct 14, 2010
I understand what you’re saying about reinventing the business, but when the business is predicated on selling records, how do you change that? That’s what the revenue stream is. And you can’t out-market free. I will go to my grave saying file-sharing is by far the #1 reason record sales have slipped so much. There’s a very large part of the population that doesn’t believe that music should be paid for anymore. And there’s nothing that can be done about that until there are some regulations put in place to monitor that stuff.
I wasn’t trying to say that only talented artists sell records, but generally speaking, only “artists”, i.e. people who are largely in control of their content, have long careers. A puppet might give you an album or two that’ll make crazy money, but unless you continually reinvent yourself from an artistic standpoint or establish that you have a very specific message that you want to project, the odds are that you aren’t going to last very long.
There are very few examples of performers that have been able to circumvent that.
GG says:
Oct 18, 2010
For longevity, you’re right. The artists who can continue to grow and reinvent will always have a dedicated audience. But they can’t even sell records for the pop stars anymore.
It seems that you can only attach people to vehicles and grow their audience there and then sell records to that already dedicated artist.
When I talk about selling music, I’m talking about using radio. Radio has always been free right? You and I used to record songs off the radio that we liked when we had no money. So why haven’t people said that radio ruined record sales?
Use radio in a smarter way. Teach your artists how to promote, how to do interviews, how to be better marketers. Be creative. The same old shit doesn’t work anymore. We are clear about that. Become salesmen.
Did file sharing kill the movie industry? Not yet and the movie industry is raising prices. It’s not apples to apples, but file sharing is everywhere. Mac’s entire OS is online for free. Yet Apple doesn’t lose money when they release new software.