Music Thread #1 For 5/20/10: A Dire Time In Music For Album Sales

Pure nadir:

Justin Bieber's "My World 2.0" returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a fourth non-consecutive week at the top. But he does so with just a little over 60,000 copies sold according to Nielsen SoundScan, marking the second-lowest week at No. 1 since SoundScan's sales information began powering the Billboard 200 in May of 1991.

Last week it seemed likely that the No. 1 album this week -- initially predicted to be Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" -- was going to sell less than 60,000, immediately rendering it the lowest-selling No. 1 in the SoundScan era. The record low at No. 1 came in January of 2007, when the "Dreamgirls" soundtrack spent its second of two weeks at No. 1 with a shade more than 60,000 sold. ("My World 2.0" and "Dreamgirls" are both stated to have sold 60,000 in this story because Billboard rounds SoundScan's sales figures to the nearest thousand. However, "My World" sold more than "Dreamgirls," but not by much.)

60,000, my goodness gracious. The sales are so awful that in that same article, the writer Keith Caulfield had to start talking about digital sales.

I talked to my close friends over the weekend about how artists would still be able to make money in a dire time. And despite them telling me concerts and guest appearances would be the way, at the end of the day, you better have some numbers on the true test of your artists' power, and that's album sales.

No matter how much times change, albums sales still remain the king pin in the game. High album sales take care of everything else, from growing social media responsibility (especially for new artists) to holding the bargaining negotiations for collaborations, concerts, and even club/lounge appearances on certain dates.

No one is going to want someone whose flame fades away fast. It's the pure cruelty of the music business.

Now there weren't any notable releases this past week, because that 60K total for the top spot would not have come from the likes of T.I. or Drake the next upcoming weeks. But it's not like B.O.B's CD, with the #1 single in the country at the time, sold that much drastically higher a few weeks ago than what lead to Bieber reclaiming the top spot.

The RIAA hopes they can get as much as they can out of the digital era that they have already blown with their arrogance and neglect for their artists, only wanting to pocket most of the profits for themselves.

Because my, my, my all how frightening those numbers are.