Reports of revived CD sales are highly exaggerated. According to the numbers collected on hitsdailydouble.com, last week is pretty bad for the music industry. Summer used to be a time when kids had to have their music. But last week the top 10 totaled less than 500,000 copies sold of anything. Lady Gaga‘s “Born this Way” was down to 30,000 units. That’s not enough to pay for anyone to carry her rapidly cracking egg.
The number 1 CD, Beyonce‘s “4,” made the grade with a mere 111,000 copies. The only bright spot was Adele, as usual, clocking in at number 2 with 79,000. I’m not sure if anyone’s explained this to her, but Adele is the record business right now. Other than Adele, who’s also selling copies of her “19” album (yes everyone’s just numbering their CDs for titles–this generation can’t remember titles like “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” or “Songs in the Key of Life”– the next hit album will be called LOL) everyone else is at a standstill. Both new generation “American Idol” (Scotty McCreery) and old (David Cook) are just about tied with 13,000 copies each.
To his credit, Barry Manilow sold 10,230 copies of a CD full of original material on a small label and finished at number 36. The next big release, fingers crossed, will be country singer Blake Shelton this week. But other than that, it’s not such a promising release schedule.
