Weekly Music Sales Report: 02 November 2011

Thanks to Coldplay and Michael Buble, it was a good week.  Very good.

Sales are up 20% from last week and 4% from a year ago.  Year-to-year pacing remains steady at 1%, but that could change for the better in the coming weeks.

But buried in all the stats is this:  physical albums sales are down 9% from 2010.  If there was any doubt that the world was moving digital, consider that downloaded albums are 36% higher than last year and digital tracks are up 41%.  

But back to the charts.

As expected--and it would have been a collosal failure if things hadn't turned out this way--Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto entered the Canadian charts with first-week sales of 65,000.  That's the second-biggest debut of the year.  Only Lady Gaga's Born This Way sold more (81,000 copies back in May).

In second place, Michael Buble whose Christmas CD sold 37,000 units.  That makes it the third-biggest debut of the year.

But Adele didn't go far.  Her 21 album dropped to #3 but still sold 18,000 copies.  I'd expect that record to sell in the 20K range (or more) per week for the rest of the year.

And here's an interesting one:  Tom Waits--TOM FREAKIN' WAITS--debuts in the Top 10 with Bad As Me. Some 6,000 people bought it this week.  Cool.

On the digital side, Rihanna's "We Found Love" is the new #1 download with 27,000 purchases.  That's up 14% from last week.

In the US, Coldplay has a healthy #1 debut with 447,000 copies.  (I'm sure they were shooting for half a million, but they'll take it.)  Kelly Clarkson is #2 with 163,000 units and Michael Buble is in third spot with 141,000.  Adele saw a minor increase this past week--maybe the stories of her throat surgery--to finish at #4 with 107,000 copies.

The biggest digital track in America?  "We Found Love" from Rihanna with 243,000 downloads.

All figures courtesy of Nielsen Soundscan