On this last day of the sales week in the music biz, Paul McCartney and Eminem are battling it for second place on the charts.
So far, Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” looks like it will handily win the top spot again.
But the 2nd place finish is so far a neck and neck race between the famed Beatle and the notorious rapper. “McCartney III” and “Music to Murdered By Side B” are very close in sales through Tuesday. McCartney has the lead by about a thousand units, according to Buzz Angle Music.
This is good news for Sir Paul and bad news for Em aka Marshall Mathers. “McCartney III” sales of 61,000 are almost all paid downloads and CDs and vinyl, with very little streaming. Those are pure sales.
The bulk of Em’s sales are via streaming. That could be streaming of singles as well as albums. And with just 27,800 of his total 70,000 being downloads, Mathers is well behind McCartney’s number.
For McCartney, those aren’t Beatle-sized numbers but they’re very good considering he’s a legacy artist. Also, Amazon.com helped him by lowering the price of his download to $3.99 to give him a boost.
For Eminem, however, this lack of interest in “Murder Side B” is fairly alarming. The first “Music to Be Murdered By” album, released almost a year ago, sold a total of 281K copies in its first week, with pure sales of about 113,000.
So still a day left for McCartney fans to push “McCartney III” comfortably into number 2.
