Weekly Music Sales Report - 27 March 2013

Props to Justin Timberlake this week for saving the music industry from another set of ugly sales stats. We'll get to him in a moment.

First, the Canadian report.  There are three new releases at the top of the album charts, pushing sales up 4% over last week and keeping things at just -2% from 2012.  Physical CDs are down again and are now trailing last year by 17%.  Meanwhile, digital album sales--units, not revenue, of course--are up 24% while digital singles are up 10%.

Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience debuted (as expected) at #1 with a first-week sales total of 46,000 units.  This is the best one sales total of the year so far but exactly half of what Celine Dion did with Sans Attendre back in November.

At #2--a DISTANT #2--is Quebec's Marc Hervieux with 7,200 copies of Le Plasiris Demondes followed by Swollen Members at #3 with sales of 7,000 for Beautiful Death Machine.

As for the biggest single, it's still "Stay" from Rihanna, which saw another 28,000 downloads, pushing her past the 200,000 mark.

Moving to the US, JT put up some HUGE numbers wtih 968,000 units of The 20/20 Experience.  That's still less than the 1.2 million copies Taylor Swift sold of Red back in October, but jeezus, that's a good number today.  It's also a whopper compared to the 684,000 first-week copies he sold of Future Sex/LoveSounds in 2006.  Of those 968,000 albums, 452,000 were digital-only.  That's the third-highest number of its kind.  And one more stat:  by selling this many records in week 1, The 20/20 Experience is already the best-selling album of 2013.

Looking further down the chart--a LOT further down--we find country singer Kacey Musgraves at #2 with 43,000 copies of Same Trailer Different Park.

When it comes to digital singles, it's P!nk and "Just Give Me a Reason" with 241,000 downloads, moving up from #5 last week.

Finally, the most-streamed song in the US--a stat we don't get in Canada for a number of reasons--is "Suit and Tie" from Justin Timberlake wtih 1,671,215 listens.

All figures courtesy Nielsen Soundscan

New Record Store Day: The World's Shortest Album

If we're talking vinyl records, a typical album will run between 15 and 20 minutes per side.  If it's a CD, an artist has as much as 74 minutes to play with.  

But Earache Records thinks that's crazy.  That's why they're planning to release the shortest album ever as part of Record Store Day 2013 on April 20.

The whole thing runs 63 seconds.  That's both sides.  Metal Injection provides this track list along with the times of each song.  And yes, they have time things down to the tenth of a second.  Awesome.

Side A:
01. Napalm Death – You Suffer (1.9s)
02. Napalm Death – Dead (2.7s)
03. Napalm Death – Your Achievement (4.2s)
04. Wormrot – False Grind Sodomy (2.5s)
05. Wormrot – You Suffer But Why Is It My Problem (4.0s)
06. Brutal Truth – Collateral Damage (4.0s)
07. A.C. – Howard Wulkan's Bald (4.0s)

Side B:
01. Lawnmower Deth – Be Scene Not Heard (4.7s)
02. Painkiller – Trailmarker (6.0s)
03. Brutal Truth – Blockhead (7.3s)
04. Morbid Angel – Bil Ur-Sag #2 Lava (6.9s)
05. A.C. – Windchimes Are Gay (9.5s)
06. Insect Warfare – Street Sweeper (13.5s)

CMW Buzz Band: Half Moon Run

Another band that people were talking about over coffee this morning. Here's a sample

More Music from the Inbox, 09 March 2013: Blackout Beach, Dear Rouge, Akron/Family, The Bicycles, Deb Oh and the Cavaliers

By Scott Jones

Artist: Blackout Beach

Album: Blues Trip

The right mindset is here for a retro garage blues sound, and that’s exactly what Carey Mercer has done. The studio production, however, isn’t as raw as say, early White Stripes material to give it that Delta feel, but that doesn’t take away from Mercer’s “Blackout Beach” persona possessing an old soul.

Sounds like: Art-rock at the crossroads.

Link/Listen/Watch

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I Like This: Friends of Emmet

I've been keeping tabs on the Irish band, Friends of Emmet, for a couple of years now. They've started to gain some serious traction at home and are hoping to expand their reach with another trip to Canadian Music Week in March.

They have a new CD called State of Mind. Here are some samples on Soundcloud.