The good news: in a declining business, Adele’s first week sales for “Easy On Me” were huge, the biggest of any single since her “Hello” in 2015.
The bad news: her sales were down almost 60% from “Hello” and that includes streaming, which wasn’t such a big factor in 2015.
Naively, I thought “Easy on Me” would get to half a million. But it fell short, to 450,000. “Hello” had 1.1 million. Numbers are from Buzz Angle/Alpha Data.
Still, Adele broke streaming records. I love those announcements when they saw 900 billion streams or whatever. It means nothing. When you boil the streams down to actual sales, the numbers are much more realistic and not so exciting.
All singles sales are down by 50% from six years ago, so none of this is surprising. “Streaming equivalent” has all but replaced actual paid downloads. But the overall number has shrunk anyway.
Maybe “Easy On Me” is a loss leader and the next single, which will have to come next Friday or the following, will be a real killer. One hopes.
The big charts news is that Elton John’s cleverly made “Lockdown Sessions” is the number 1 album on iTunes. “Cold Heart’ is a huge singles hit, and “Always Love You” has hit the top 40. The album is full of hits that could keep radio buzzing for months. Bravo!
