Mariah Carey can be very proud: her “Caution” album sold a total of 50,000 copies this week. Most of that–43,000– were real sales of CDs and downloads. Only 7,000 came from streaming. “Caution” was projected to sell a little less than that, so this pretty good. Plus, Mariah did much better than a lot of current legacy acts of her generation or older.
The question now is, what happens to “Caution”? It’s nearly impossible to get real radio play for those artists like Mariah. She’s in a big pop music lifeboat. No one can sell much– not Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, or so on.
Meanwhile, Mumford & Sons came in at number 1 with a rocking 231,000. Most of that was sales and downloads– streaming was just about 14,000.
Another big hit this week: Michael Buble. His “Love” album, produced by David Foster, came in just under 90,000 with very little streaming. Buble has been talking about retiring, but now that his son is better, I bet he’ll change his mind.
Also big: “The Greatest Showman Reimagined.” These are songs from that movie, re-done by stars like Kelly Clarkson and Panic at the Disco. Atlantic Records A&R chief Pete Ganbarg has shown amazing acuity with repackages like this and “Hamilton Mixtape” after he’s had huge huge hits with the original project. “Reimagined” just about tied Buble, and finished at number 2.
