Music Thread #1 For 1/6/10: Despite A Furious Late Push From Susan Boyle, Taylor Swift Ends With Top Selling CD of 2009

Both of them went over the 3 million mark, the only artists for US best sales to do that since 2006.

Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream" reigns for a sixth straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 137,000 (down 73%) according to Nielsen SoundScan, bringing her cumulative sales total up to 3,104,000. However, while that is a huge sales sum -- especially considering it was totaled in just six weeks time -- it's not enough to overtake Taylor Swift's "Fearless" as 2009's top selling album. The latter is at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 this week, selling another 60,000 -- bringing its 2009 total to 3,217,000.

Of course, Boyle can rest easy in knowing that her "Dream" is but one of just two albums to sell at least 3 million copies in the U.S. last year -- something that hasn't happened since 2006, when three albums did it. Boyle's "Dream" is also 2009's top selling album released last year (Swift's "Fearless" dropped in late 2008), and was also the top selling physical album of 2009. Of its overall 2009 total, physical CDs accounted for 3,019,000 copies, whereas digital downloads made up a rather tiny 86,000.

If there were probably an additional month in 2009, Boyle would have been the top selling artist this year.

Swift obviously had plenty more time to get her albums sales since Fearless dropped last year while Boyle's album dropped six weeks ago. Nevertheless, those are two happy individuals, which sure as hell can't be said about a lot of artists in the industry.