Sugarland Sweetens Sales Chatter

Sugarland topped both album charts this week as its Incredible Machine churned out sales of almost 203k units with about 19% sold in the digital format. Nashville rockers Kings of Leon earned the No. 2 spot on all genre album sales with its fifth album,? Come Around Sundown, which shifted about 184k copies. Also new this week is Union from Elton John and Music City resident Leon Russell which scanned almost 80k to earn the No. 3 rank, all genre.

The list of new country albums and the added sales they represent has been steadily elevating country’s weekly sales totals pushing it up 7% this week to a total of 771k. (Readers may recall that last week’s math showed that average weekly sales of 1.67 million units through year end would be necessary to equal last year’s country album sales totals.) Last week country sales were off 12.5% and this week have improved slightly, now down a more modest 12.3%.

Moving to the Tracks chart for Digital Genre Country the love story is all about the Hendersonville 20-year old. Taylor Swift owns three of the Top 4 track spots with “Mean” (163k+), “Back To December”?(70k+) and “Mine” (49k). (Big Machine’s The Band Perry owns the No. 3 position with “If I Die Young” (58k) giving the label all four top slots.