February 18, 2009

Taylor Swift's Fearless tops the album chart with sales of 92,000 units. Not so long ago that would have been a horrible tally for a week's top album, but these days it's about average. And while album sales are dropping (especially for the hits), singles are selling better and better. The two are finally converging in a way that allows for easy comparison of their market share.

If you saw today's chart posts at Billboard.biz (album chart, singles chart) you have may done some simple math and realized the top single of the week, Flo Rida's "Right Round," sold the equivalent of 63,600 albums last week. The single set the one-week record for most downloads with 636,000 units. Dividing the number of singles sold by ten results in an album equivalent figure that has an equal wholesale value to a digital album.

In the hypothetical event that equivalent albums were merged with actual albums, "Right Round" would be at #3 on this week's album chart. Coldplay's Viva La Vida is the #3 title on the chart with sales of 62,000 units. (I should note that because of the higher average transaction price -- due to its mix of CDs and digital albums -- the trade value of Coldplay's weekly sales is higher than the trade value of a digital-only release.)

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Posted by Glenn at 12:01 PM |

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