The mystery of Mariah Carey’s 2001 album continues.
“Glitter” suddenly rose to number 1 on iTunes this week out of nowhere, with no re-release or promotion. The album, a failure in 2001, just re-appeared. It’s not even available for streaming, isn’t on Spotify, and almost no copies of it exist.
According to BuzzAngle and hitsdailydouble, “Glitter” sold just over 4,000 copies. It finished at number 36 for the week.
Just to spell this out: the actual number 1 album for the week, Kane Brown’s “Experiment,” sold 106,775 copies including streaming. All week on iTunes, “Glitter” was positioned higher than “Experiment.”
Even now, “Glitter” is at number 13 on iTunes. Meanwhile, Mariah’s actual new album, “Caution,” is number 4. It’s her first first hit album since 2009.
But how did “Glitter” become a hit just on iTunes– especially when it wasn’t really selling? Why is still now a fake hit on iTunes?
One theory is that somehow iTunes has been gamed and is doing nothing about it. Something similar happened a couple of weeks ago with Chinese pop star Kris Wu. Suddenly, ten of his singles swamped the iTunes singles chart. His album jumped up the albums chart. No one knew what was going on. Billboard and Nielsen are still trying to figure this out. But very quickly, Kris Wu dropped off the charts and life went back to normal.
Carey’s fans think something magical happened. Carey may, too. But the whole “Glitter” issue has somehow been faked. In time, it will be figured out.
Meantime, The Beatles sold 61,000 copies of their new White Album box set. That number included 10,000 streams. That’s a real sale.
