Chicker
01-10-2004, 03:39 PM
OutKast, Keys & Keith in Sales Spotlight
Sat January 10, 2004 08:31 AM ET
By Geoff Mayfield
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - It is tempting to think of the holiday selling season as the music industry's Super Bowl, but in 2003, the leading sellers are more analogous to college football, where more than one championship might be declared.
Fact is, no one album dominated the fourth quarter of 2003 the way that Shania Twain's "Up!" led the holiday pack of 2002 with 2.9 million sold in just six weeks. However, a broader array of strong sellers and an improved economy put album units in the 2003 holiday stretch from Thanksgiving week through Christmas 3% ahead of the same span in 2002.
Further, from October through the end of 2003, Nielsen SoundScan pegs album sales at 242.8 million units, up 6.6% over fourth-quarter 2002. Taking turns as the parade marshals: OutKast, Toby Keith and Alicia Keys.
OutKast's double-set, "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," which retained the lead on the Billboard 200 album chart for the week ended Jan. 5, was the best seller for the quarter, posting 2.6 million scans from October through December -- and that tally doesn't include the title's September opener, when it sold another 510,000 copies.
Narrow the field to the period that ran from Thanksgiving week through year's end, and "The Diary of Alicia Keys" was queen, notching 1.7 million sales in that span.
The runner-up in both of those time frames was "Shock'n Y'All" by Keith. The country boss' latest moved 2.3 million in just eight weeks, second only to OutKast for the year's final three months, with 1.35 million of those sold from Thanksgiving through Christmas, topped then only by Keys.
Cut the calendar another way, though, and Keith gets his own championship ring. His album is the best seller of all in the year's final two months.
One troubling observation from a music retailer's perspective: Each of the 20 best sellers from the last three months of the year, and each of the 19 best sellers for the Thanksgiving-Christmas window, are titles that did not reach stores until the last four months of 2003, a pattern that makes it difficult to encourage superstars to drop albums during the first eight months of the year.
But what a start for 2004. For the first time since 2000, album volume for the inaugural week of a new year is larger than that from the first week of the prior year.
The year's robust start continues momentum seen during the last four months of 2003, when album sales beat those of the same 2002 frame for 12 of the last 16 weeks.
It is still too early to dance a jig and declare the music industry has solved all the woes it has suffered since 2001. Figure that fulfillment of a Sony Music/BMG merger and Edgar Bronfman Jr. taking Warner Music Group private will cost more than 1,000 people their jobs, and even without those developments, the record companies need to continue overhauling their business models before they truly find firmer ground.
Still, it's refreshing to start off the year in upbeat mode, eh?
With the erosion that album sales saw the past few years, it is quite possible that many same-week gains will follow this initial win through the first eight months of the year. The challenge might be to keep that momentum rolling through September, when we hit that period when the recent streak of positives began.
Veteran chart watchers know the drill. With the last Christmas-shopping week being the biggest frame of any year, the week that follows sees most albums selling fewer copies. Call it music's version of Newton's Law.
Consequently, with overall album sales down 53% from Christmas week, upward moves on the current charts occur because erosion of certain titles was smaller than declines seen by the other albums in that vicinity.
Evanescence and Michael Jackson offer prime examples on the Billboard 200. The former sees a drop of almost 45%. But it has the smallest decline of albums in the top 20 and thus jumps nine places to No. 7.
Jackson, meanwhile, following his "60 Minutes" interview and CBS' subsequent Jan. 2 airing of "Michael Jackson's Number Ones," clocks a 38% decline, the smallest drop by any title in the top 50. The album soars to No. 39 from No. 66.
British glam band the Darkness has but a 13% decline (173-92), which is the smallest sales slide on the entire chart.
The only sales gain on the Billboard 200 goes to the soundtrack from "Cold Mountain," the Nicole Kidman/Jude Law film that opened Christmas day.
Reuters/Billboard
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....09&pageNumber=0
Sat January 10, 2004 08:31 AM ET
By Geoff Mayfield
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - It is tempting to think of the holiday selling season as the music industry's Super Bowl, but in 2003, the leading sellers are more analogous to college football, where more than one championship might be declared.
Fact is, no one album dominated the fourth quarter of 2003 the way that Shania Twain's "Up!" led the holiday pack of 2002 with 2.9 million sold in just six weeks. However, a broader array of strong sellers and an improved economy put album units in the 2003 holiday stretch from Thanksgiving week through Christmas 3% ahead of the same span in 2002.
Further, from October through the end of 2003, Nielsen SoundScan pegs album sales at 242.8 million units, up 6.6% over fourth-quarter 2002. Taking turns as the parade marshals: OutKast, Toby Keith and Alicia Keys.
OutKast's double-set, "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," which retained the lead on the Billboard 200 album chart for the week ended Jan. 5, was the best seller for the quarter, posting 2.6 million scans from October through December -- and that tally doesn't include the title's September opener, when it sold another 510,000 copies.
Narrow the field to the period that ran from Thanksgiving week through year's end, and "The Diary of Alicia Keys" was queen, notching 1.7 million sales in that span.
The runner-up in both of those time frames was "Shock'n Y'All" by Keith. The country boss' latest moved 2.3 million in just eight weeks, second only to OutKast for the year's final three months, with 1.35 million of those sold from Thanksgiving through Christmas, topped then only by Keys.
Cut the calendar another way, though, and Keith gets his own championship ring. His album is the best seller of all in the year's final two months.
One troubling observation from a music retailer's perspective: Each of the 20 best sellers from the last three months of the year, and each of the 19 best sellers for the Thanksgiving-Christmas window, are titles that did not reach stores until the last four months of 2003, a pattern that makes it difficult to encourage superstars to drop albums during the first eight months of the year.
But what a start for 2004. For the first time since 2000, album volume for the inaugural week of a new year is larger than that from the first week of the prior year.
The year's robust start continues momentum seen during the last four months of 2003, when album sales beat those of the same 2002 frame for 12 of the last 16 weeks.
It is still too early to dance a jig and declare the music industry has solved all the woes it has suffered since 2001. Figure that fulfillment of a Sony Music/BMG merger and Edgar Bronfman Jr. taking Warner Music Group private will cost more than 1,000 people their jobs, and even without those developments, the record companies need to continue overhauling their business models before they truly find firmer ground.
Still, it's refreshing to start off the year in upbeat mode, eh?
With the erosion that album sales saw the past few years, it is quite possible that many same-week gains will follow this initial win through the first eight months of the year. The challenge might be to keep that momentum rolling through September, when we hit that period when the recent streak of positives began.
Veteran chart watchers know the drill. With the last Christmas-shopping week being the biggest frame of any year, the week that follows sees most albums selling fewer copies. Call it music's version of Newton's Law.
Consequently, with overall album sales down 53% from Christmas week, upward moves on the current charts occur because erosion of certain titles was smaller than declines seen by the other albums in that vicinity.
Evanescence and Michael Jackson offer prime examples on the Billboard 200. The former sees a drop of almost 45%. But it has the smallest decline of albums in the top 20 and thus jumps nine places to No. 7.
Jackson, meanwhile, following his "60 Minutes" interview and CBS' subsequent Jan. 2 airing of "Michael Jackson's Number Ones," clocks a 38% decline, the smallest drop by any title in the top 50. The album soars to No. 39 from No. 66.
British glam band the Darkness has but a 13% decline (173-92), which is the smallest sales slide on the entire chart.
The only sales gain on the Billboard 200 goes to the soundtrack from "Cold Mountain," the Nicole Kidman/Jude Law film that opened Christmas day.
Reuters/Billboard
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....09&pageNumber=0