Nielsen SoundScan sent over some info about vinyl and digital sales as well as news that Rihanna's digital sales record from last year has been broken by not just one, but 4 artists this year. Here is the breakdown from Nielsen SoundScan, followed by news of another big development. VINYL: We are now over 2 million Vinyl Albums sold, breaking the previous record of 1.9 million (which was the total sold in all of 2008). 2008 YTD was 1.5 million.
DIGITAL: Four artists have broken Rihanna's Digital Tracks sales record (she sold 9.9 million tracks in all of 2008) and three have surpassed 10 million in sales. -Michael Jackson - 11.3 million Total Digital Tracks YTD. -Lady Gaga - 11.1 million YTD -BEP - 10.3 million YTD -Taylor Swift - 9.98 million YTD
NOTE: 1) Next week we will break the 2008 year-end digital album sales total of 65 million. We are at 63.9 million this week. 2) Next week will also be the week we break the 1 billion track sales mark. We are at 998.3 million this week.
But even bigger news came from Reuters on Wednesday, "The compilers of the Billboard 200, the benchmark pop albums chart in the United States, said on Wednesday they would dramatically overhaul the listing later this month to include catalog recordings as well as current releases." What that means that the album chart will no longer be limited to albums released in the past 18 months, and this could dramatically alter the album charts as we know them and give us a REAL picture about which albums are selling in a given week. - Read the Reuters report here
