The top 50 albums is a weird, sad place as usual this week.
Playboy Carti finished at number 1 with 302,000 equivalent albums sold.
The problem for Carti is that 290,000 were all streaming. He actually only 10,000 CDs and paid downloads of his new album. Fans were curious but didn’t need to own his “Music” album.
Fair enough.
Lady Gaga, on the other hand, was queen of the cart. She sold a total of 76,666 equivalent albums. But the news is that a quarter of them — 26,979 — were physical sales. “Mayhem” is a recording her fans want in their hand, or permanently in their downloads.
Lady Gaga wins. You see, the royalty is higher for physical than streaming. It’s pretty black and white.
Next week comes the new Morgan Wallen album, “I Never Paid the Price for Saying the N Word.” Just kidding. Wallen’s fans are down with him because this episode was not a problem for them. He’s selling millions of albums every week.
God bless.
