Scanning Soundscan - 7/14

It’s the third week in a row that Eminem’s Recovery sits at the top of the Billboard charts. In this day and age, we don’t see that many artists hold the top spot for consecutive weeks. It did happen one other time this year, when Sade’s Soldier Of Love took three weeks at #1 back in March. Eminem has had 3 weeks of triple digit sales, bringing his total to 1.2 million copies. Love him or hate him, those are the kind of numbers this industry longs for and doesn’t see much anymore. To compare, that previous Sade chart-topping album JUST hit 1.2 million copies this week and it was released 22 weeks ago.

The long-awaited solo debut from Outkast’s Big Boi debuted at #3 with 62k. Other debuts in the Top 20 include Enrique Iglesias’ Euphoria at #10 with 27k, Bret Michaels’ new solo album at #14 with 22k, and a great debut for Kylie Minogue’s Aphrodite at #19 with 18k. Considering her 2008 album X debuted at #139 with 6k, this is a strong showing for her in the US (it’s also her strongest collection of tunes since 2002’s Fever and hopefully Astralwerks will continue to promote her stateside). Aphrodite sold a mere 172 copies on vinyl in its first week but almost 11k of the 18k total were digital sales (for a #5 debut on the Digital Albums chart).

Speaking of people who normally can’t catch a break in the US, Kelis has an incredible new album called Flesh Tone. It debuted down at #48 with close to 8k. Even with great reviews and a strong response in the clubs with the first two singles from this album, it seems like this is another album that will struggle to find mainstream acceptance.

In other debuts, the new project from Trent Reznor called How To Destroy Angels makes it to #151 with almost 3500 copies sold. When you consider that this EP is available for free download through the band’s site, you can see that there is still a small sliver of folks who desire physical product. This EP is also #2 on the Heatseekers chart.

How I Got Over from The Roots had its first sales week on wax, debuting at #2 on the Vinyl charts with about 650 copies. The overall sales total for the album is around 86k.

Let’s look at a few more sales totals, from pretty good to not very promising (with some digital totals to look at the percentage of digital to physical product):

MGMT Oracular Spectacular (645k total — touring & new album has put this one back in the Top 200, 269k is digital)
Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (448k total — 220k is digital)
Vampire Weekend Contra (368k total — 180k is digital)
Gorillaz Plastic Beach (298k total — 127k is digital)
Broken Bells s/t (211k total — 105k is digital)
The Black Keys Brothers (182k total — 72k is digital)
The xx s/t (169k total — 98k is digital)
She & Him Vol 2 (149k)
MGMT Congratulations (146k)
The National High Violet (125k total — 60k is digital)
La Roux s/t (103k)
Mumford & Sons Sigh No More (89k)
Sleigh Bells Treats (45k total — 33k is digital)
Local Natives Gorilla Manor (36k total — 24k is digital)
Crystal Castles II (21k)
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti Before Today (9500)
Kele Boxer (3500)
Wavves King Of The Beach (1700)