Sales Numbers Down Except for Sugarland's Holiday Release

As too be expected, this past week’s sales numbers for Country Music dropped on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart.  In fact, only two albums from country artists on the entire chart saw sales increases and those two albums are both holiday releases.  For the third consecutive week Carrie Underwood has the best-selling country album in the land.  With nearly 90,000 more copies sold, Play On is officially a Gold-selling record and sometime after the beginning of 2010 the album will likely be platinum.  Taylor Swift’s year-old Fearless is next and her record may reach 5,000,000 sold in the same time-frame.  Lady Antebellum’s sophomore album Need You Now won’t be out until January, 2010 but that hasn’t stopped fans from picking up their self-titled debut album.  The record has now scanned over one million copies in its time on the charts.  Tim McGraw’s Southern Voice is once-again the fourth best-selling album of the week.  The album has now crossed the 300,000 albums-sold threshold.  The Zac Brown Band’s “Foundation” has now scanned over 1.2 million copies as it takes the fifth best-selling country album title this week.  It is also this week’s 27th best-selling album on the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums Chart. 

Sugarland’s Gold And Green is one of the two country albums which experienced sales leaps this week as the duo’s first holiday release continues its march up the charts.  If this trend continues the album may be one of the season’s best-selling holiday releases.  Darius Rucker’s Learn To Live continues to be a strong seller with another 22,000 albums sold this week while Jason Aldean’s Wide Open continues its march to Platinum status and it could see that mark in the early part of 2010.  The Hannah Montana Movie soundtrack continues to move albums despite being for a movie that was released this past spring.  Taylor Swift’s venerable self-titled debut (from 2006) continues to sell well as the album moves closer to the 4.5 million copies sold mark. It rounds out this week’s Top 10 country albums, all of which are within the Nielsen SoundScan Hot 200 Albums chart’s Top 50.  This continues to show retail and the industry that country music remains one of the stronger genres for albums sales, particularly as other genres become more and more single-song based.

In the interesting albums section of this week’s rundown of the charts, we find Miranda Lambert’s Revolution passing the 200,000 copies sold mark as it lands the 11th best-selling distinction this week.  The Now That’s What I Call A Country Christmas compilation from the major labels is the second of the two country albums to receive sales increases this week as it jumps from 79 to 59 on this week’s charts.  The album has now sold nearly 32,000 copes and with continued purchases due to the holiday season, the album (with one disc featuring new hits from Today’s stars and the second one featuring classic country Christmas tunes) will likely continue to run up the charts. Sugarland’s Live on the Inside album (a Walmart exclusive 2 disc set) has now sold over 200,000 copies since its release earlier this year while indie country artist Colt Ford has now passed the 100,000 albums sold mark, a remarkable achievement given the fact that the artist hasn’t received too much airplay on radio or CMT. 

The ‘fallout’ after the CMA Awards sales bump arrived and it was as fierce as expected. However, fortune is on the Artist and label’s sides as the holiday season is upon us and that should only help their albums maintain current sales levels or slight increases as the artists look towards 2010.