This Week's Album Sales Are the Lowest In SoundScan History
With streaming services taking over the market, the U.S. music industry is experiencing one of its
With streaming services taking over the market, the U.S. music industry is experiencing one of its toughest periods. As Billboard points out, this week’s 3.97-million album sales tally is the lowest in Nielsen SoundScan history, which began tracking data in 1991. This also marks the first time weekly sales have fallen below the 4 million mark in that time span.
Wiz Khalifa’s new album, Blacc Hollywood, was the top album by debuting with sales of 90,000 units. It is the lowest figure of the first-week sales of many other top debuts of 2014. Three other albums debuted inside the top 10 but averaged only 31,000 units apiece. Last year’s numbers for this past week, ending August 25, 2013, was 4.88 million albums.
It’s been a bad year overall. The weekly average number of album sales dropped from 4.75 million units in the first quarter to 4.55 million units in the second quarter. In the first eight weeks of the third quarter, the average has fallen further to 4.2 million.
