bob tarantino

Chart Stroll 12.03.06

Souces: Billboard, Canoe

US Top 10 (for the sales week ending November 26, 2006)

1. Jay-Z, Kingdom Come (debut) (680,000 copies)

2. Daughtry, Daughtry (debut) (304,000)

3. Now That's What I Call Music! 23 (289,000)

4. The Beatles, Love (debut) (272,000)

5. Snoop Dogg, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment (debut) (264,000)

6. Beyonce, B'Day (173,000)

7. Hannah Montana soundtrack (167,000)

8. Akon, Convicted (164,000)

9. Tupac Shakur, Pac's Life (debut) (159,000)

10. Keith Urban, Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing (157,000)

Other noteworthy debuts: U2, U218: Singles (#12, 134,000); Tom Waits, Oprhans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (#74, 21,000); Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse (#83, 19,000); Oasis, Stop the Clocks (Best Of) (#89, 18,000)

Comments - Sales are up 36% from last week, and Jay-Z's big debut certainly didn't hurt.  I mentioned last week that anything less than 750,000 copies would have to be considered a disappointment, and I'll need to stick by that.  It's his biggest week ever, and there's noise about him tying the Rolling Stones in third place for most career #1s, and while that's a hell of an accomplishment, it's a relatively meaningless statistic at this point.  Once you're looking at more than three-quarter of a million copies in a week, that's when you're talking about cultural saturation - and nothing less should have been the goal in Jay's ending his "retirement".  Akon debuted last week at #1, but, even though he has two Top Ten singles at the moment, he posted a 42% sales decrease - the only title in the top ten to do so (and bear in mind that 162 of the top 200 titles posted sales increases this week).  Two posthumous debuts, from opposite ends of the pop culture spectrum: the Beatles and Tupac (and also Tupac's 14th (!) posthumous release).  The inability of Oasis to sell meaningful numbers of units in the US continues apace.

Canada Top 10 (for the sales week ending November 23, 2006)

1. The Beatles, Love (debut)

2. Il Divo, Sempre (debut)

3. U2, U218: Singles (debut)

4. Rock Star Supernova, Rock Star Supernova (debut)

5. Josh Groban, Awake

6. Jay-Z, Kingdom Come (debut)

7. Sarah McLachlan, Wintersong

8. MuchDance 2007

9. Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse (debut)

10. Snoop Dogg, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment (debut)

Other noteworthy debuts: Tupac Shakur, Pac's Life (#19); Our Lady Peace, Decade (#30); Oasis Stop the Clocks (Best Of) (#38)

Comments - What a remarkably different chart, eh? Hip hop hasn't made as significant a cultural inroad, as it doesn't dominate the charts to the extent it does in the US.  The "Rock Star" reality TV franchise, likewise, is capable of moving product north of the border, but can't get much of a second look in the US (similar results were obtained for INXS last year).  I think I've read somewhere that Canada is one of U2's biggest per capita markets, and a #3 debut for a singles collection would certainly attest to that.  Loreena McKennitt is also evidently more fondly (and profitably) known up here, while the sales muscle of Our Lady Peace appears to be waning - though maybe everybody who has any desire to hear Raine Maida's histrionics has already purchased their albums.

Chart Stroll 11.26.06

Sources: Billboard, MTV News, Canoe

US Top 10 (for the sales week ending November 19, 2006)

1. The Game, Doctor's Advocate (debut) (358,000 copies)

2. Akon, Konvicted (debut) (284,000)

3. Now That's What I Call Music! 23 (194,000)

4. Josh Groban, Awake (150,000)

5. Hannah Montana sountrack (114,000)

6. Keith Urban, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing (103,000)

7. Sugarland, Enjoy the Ride (81,000)

8. Tenacious D, The Pick of Destiny (debut) (81,000)

9. Beyonce, B'Day (68,000)

10. +44, When Your Heart Stops Beating (debut) (66,000)

Other noteworthy debuts: Fat Joe, Me, Myself & I (#14, 60,000); Staind, Singles, 1996-2006 (#41, 27,000)

Comments - You know that hip hop has become the reigning mode of the music-purchasing market segment's cultural expression when two mediocrities like The Game and Akon can hold the top two slots with their debuts.  This is roughly like if Warrant and Faster Pussycat had planted their flags in a slow week in 1988 (for the record, that never happened, because neither band hit ever hit such chart highs (Warrant hit #10 with their debut and #7 with Cherry Pie; the highest Taime Downe and crew managed was #48 with 1989's Wake Me When It's Over) - but they released their albums in the era pre-SoundScan, when the charts were open to more manipulation and less reflective of actual sales).

Sales have started ticking upwards as the Christmas season approaches (a 4.5% increase over last week), but we're still seeing a pretty weak chart when by the time you hit the tenth position you're at less than 70,000 units sold.  It's also interesting to note that a joke band (and I think they'd take that in the best possible way) like Tenacious D can score a higher debut than a band (+44) that is functionally two-thirds of the late Blink-182, one of the biggest selling rock bands of the last decade.  We'll have to see what Jay-Z can pull off when Kingdom Come appears on the next set of charts - if The Game can sell 358,000 copies, you'd have to figure that anything less than 750,000 for Hova would be a disappointment.

Canada Top 10 (for the sales week ending November 23, 2006)

1. Josh Groban, Awake

2. The Game, Doctor's Advocate (debut)

3. MuchDance 2007

4. Akon, Konvicted (debut)

5. Sarah McLachlan, Wintersong

6. Eva Avila, Somewhere Else (debut)

7. Gregory Charles, I Think of You

8. +44, When Your Heart Stops Beating (debut)

9. Big Shiny Tunes 11

10. Keith Urban, Love, Pain & The Whole Crazy Thing

Other noteworthy debuts: Tenacious D, The Pick of Destiny (#31), George Michael, Twenty-Five (#46)

Comments - Josh Groban trumps The Game? Whoda thunk it? Solid Canadian common sense relegates The D to a more rational debut position. George Michael's hits collection debuted at #1 in the UK, and forty-five slots lower in Canada - maybe on this side of the pond people have a better handle on the fact that you can pretty much buy Faith and have just about everything worth hearing out of the guy?

Bonus - Just as an example of how the bottom has fallen out of the singles sales market (i.e., the purchasing of a single on CD), and how, therefore, miniscule sales amounts can result in you ending up on the chart, take a look at last week's Canadian singles sales chart.  Two songs you've never heard by Nine Inch Nails occupy slots 7 and 11, the latter being tied with an Iron Maiden tune.  Ensconced at #8?  "The Sons of Odin", the latest by metal band Manowar (occasional claimant to the title "Loudest Band in the World").

Chart Stroll 11.15.06

[Herewith, the inaugural edition of a weekly feature - a quick rundown of the new music charts.]

Sources: The Billboard Top 200 Albums; MTV News

The music industry presents us with a number of mysteries.  Who, f'rinstance, the f*** are all those people who are buying Black Eyed Peas and Fergie albums?  Just as puzzling, who is buying the Now That's What I Call Music! series?  The most recent North American edition (the 23rd) will debut at #1, selling 337,000 copies.  The mystery doesn't arise from the quality of the compilation - chart-topping singles are properly popular.  What's confusing is that, based on what we've been hearing from the music industry, compilations should be dead in the water.  Aren't the post-Napster generations supposed to have been intent on stealing all the music they can get their hands on, leaving record companies and artists crying poor?  And what could be more disposable than a singles compilation?  If the "illegal downloading is killing the music business" thesis were true, nobody should be buying compilations: it would be easier and cheaper to just rip whatever singles you wanted and create your own compilations.  But 337,000 copies is nothing to sneeze at - and with the likes of Fergie, Justin Timberlake and Nickelback making up the track listing, we can be fairly certain it isn't the middle-aged tech-wary consumers who are picking up the latest in the series: it's most likely exactly the industry's target market (pre-teens and teens with disposable income).

Josh Groban pops up at #2 with 270,000 copies - also quite a haul for a guy whose ouevre consists of bellowed pop.  It'll be interesting to see how long he manages to stay in the Top Ten - without a huge hit single, I'm guessing it'll be a one or two week run.  Country pop artists take up slots 3, 4 and 8 (Keith Urban, Sugarland and Carrie Underwood, respectively) - although this may just be a blip in light of last week's Country Music Awards show, it's still worth noting that country can command such a big chunk of the upper reaches of the charts nearly fifteen years after the Garth Brooks-fueled resurgence of the genre.

The Dave Matthews Band, one group whose popularity completely mystifies me (overly precious granola ersatz-rock? er, no thanks...), rings in at #10 with a hits collection - but only manages to sell 65,000 copies.  That's bad both for the band, but also for the industry: if you've slipped below six digits and you're not even out of the Top Ten, things are pretty dire.  Oh, and it's only six or so weeks until Christmas.  Sales will tick up after Thanksgiving as stores fill and higher-profile releases come out, but this shouldn't exactly be a slow sales season - the industry seems to have taken an order of magnitude hit.

Speaking of mystery's, here's another: who was possessed to think that a Ricky Martin Unplugged album was a good idea?  It bows at #38 with 28,000 copies.

Kevin Federline's debut drops out of the Top 200, selling 1,200 copies in its second week, for a total of less than 3,000*.  By way of comparison, William Hung managed to sell around 200,000 copies of his debut...

UPDATE: * Lies! Lies! Apologies all around - I mistranscribed my own notes.  Federline hasn't sold less than 3,000 copies, he's sold less than 8,000 copies (around 6,500 in his first week on sale, plus around 1,200 in his second week).  Granted, my mistyping resulted in a, what, nearly 200% error, but even so, the song remains largely the same...