CDs: Where Is The Love?

Post Valentines Day, where is the Love?

This week’s Nielsen SoundScan wrap covers results through the week ending Feb. 22. After last week’s love-filled Valentines Day/post-Grammy bump, overall sales slid, dropping 13% week to week. For country, the story was more pronounced as the format’s scans fell a full 26%.

The Top 75 Current Country list accounted for a total of 358k units, about half of country’s total sales for the week. YTD, country album sales are off 14.8% which compares closely with all-genre scans which are off YTD by 12%.

Looking at 2009 country sales, the top selling albums are Swift (560k), Plant/Krauss (132k), Swift (128k), Sugarland (121k), Dierks Bentley (115k), Zac Brown Band (108k), Darius Rucker (105k), Rascal Flatts (84k), Jamey Johnson (82k), and Lady Antebellum (69k). By label, a quick glance shows Big Machine (Swift & Swift), Universal (Sugarland, Johnson) each with two entries in the YTD Top Ten best sellers and Capitol (Bentley, Rucker, Lady A) rocks with three.

Digital albums continue to grow as a percentage of total country album sales, now hitting 11.9% of total country sales. In 2008 they were only 6.8% of total country sales.
Click Here to see the CD Release Calendar.  Next up are CDs from Jake Owen, Jack Ingram and Martina McBride.