Green Day's ¡Dos!sold just over 60k to enter at 10 on Billboard 200 (¡Uno! debuted at 2 with 139k). Deftones' Koi No Yokan was right behind at 11 with just over 59k, while Lana Del Ray's Paradise was at 9 with 66k albums sold and The Weeknd's Trilogy opened at 4 with nearly 91k albums sold.
Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city debuted at the #2 spot on Billboard, selling 242,000 records its first week. Not bad for a longtime independent artist who just recently signed to Aftermath Records.
Taylor Swift sold 1.21 million copies of Red its first week. It's the biggest sales week for an album since 2002. She's also the first woman in chart history to ever have two albums sell over 1 million copies in their first weeks.
Taylor Swift is projected to sell over a million copies of her new album, Red, and will possibly surpass Lady Gaga's mark of 1.1 million from May 2011.
Mumford and Sons sold another 156k copies of their new album last week, again landing at number one on the charts. Muse came in at number two with just over 100k. Green Day dropped to number 10.
Mumford & Sons have six different songs from their new album, Babel, that debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 this past week -- the most since The Beatles did it back in 1964.
Mumford and Sons officially had the best debut week album sales of 2012 with over 600,000 copies sold. Babel had the second biggest debut week in digital sales ever with 420,000 downloads, just falling behind Lady Gaga's Born This Way last year. The only other indie distributed album to do better was The Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden back in 2007. Another interesting fact is 1 out of every 10 Spotify users in the US streamed at least one track from Babel.
A report by MusicMetric shows that Americans used BitTorrent to illegally download 759 million songs (assuming 10 songs per album) throughout the first half of 2012. The most active city for illegal downloads was Gainesville, Fla., with other small towns (Albany, GA; Fairbanks, AK; Lexington, KY; Tallahassee, FL) being listed as other high offenders. This information was rated per capita. The report lists YouTube as the most popular website for listening to music. Check out the full rundown here.
Taylor Swift's new single, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," broke the record for biggest digital sales week for a song by a woman with 623,000 sold.
Neilsen SoundScan has reported its mid-year sales numbers, and Adele's 21 is the only album so far to have sold over 1 million units (she sold 3.69 million copies so far). This is the first time the industry has only had one album sell at least 1 million records mid-way through the year in SoundScan's 21 years of tracking data. Remarkably, 21 was also the leader at the mid-way point in 2011, and topped the year-end charts last year as well. If the record sells the most copies this year, it will be the first album to ever top the total sales charts two years in a row. Oddly enough, Lionel Richie's Tuskegee takes the No. 2 overall spot (912K), One Direction is at No. 3 (899K), Whitney...
Memphis May Fire sold over 18,000 copies of Challenger this week, putting them at No. 16 on the Billboard charts. Linkin Park and Maroon 5 topped the charts.
Justin Bieber's new album, Believe, came in at #1 this week with more than 374k copies sold, marking it as the biggest chart debut for a record this year.
Usher took the top spot on the sales charts this week, selling 128,000 units of Looking 4 Myself. Rush debuted in second place with 103,000 units of Clockwork Angels, while Adele dropped to No. 3 with another 60,000 of 21. Other notable debuts include Ed Sheeran at No. 4 with 44,000 copies of + and Waka Flocka Flame at No. 9 with 33,000 of Triple F Life. Finally, fun. moved yet another 16,000 copies of Some Nights, landing at No. 22. Some Nights hasn't moved out of the top 50 in its 17-week run since its release, and has sold over 300,000 copies in total.
Adele moved back into the top overall spot this week, moving another 74,000 units of 21. The Beach Boys debuted in the third spot with 63,000 copies of That's Why God Made the Radio, while Curren$y came in at No. 5 with 39,000 units of Stoned Immaculate. John Mayer's Born and Raised dropped from the top spot to No. 7, declining 44 percent while moving 37,500 units. Of course, fun. continued its strong performance, remaining in the top 20 with almost 18,000 more sales of Some Nights.
A Sex Pistols 7-inch, featuring "God Save the Queen" and "No Feelings," sold for $19,471.35 on eBay recently. The 7-inch is reportedly one of only two copies known to exist, made because of the band's turbulent history with rapidly changing record labels.
John Mayer coasts at the top of the charts again this week, moving almost 68,000 additional copies of Born and Raised - a 71 percent decline from his meteoric sales last week. Adele and One Direction come in after Mayer, while Regina Spektor and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros see the two highest debuts at No. 4 (38,000) and No. 6 (29,000), respectively. Sigur Ros also saw an excellent debut week, cracking the top 10 and No. 9 with 24,000 copies of Valtari. Equally as awesome, fun. saw a huge rise in sales, increasing 57 percent and selling another 17,000 copies of Some Nights - perhaps partially in thanks to the awesome music video they came out with.
As expected, John Mayer debuted on top of the charts by selling over 230,000 units of Born and Raised - and it wasn't even close. Adele again stood in at No. 2, but sold about four times less than Mayer, with 53,000 copies of 21. Adam Lambert, last week's No. 1, dropped 70% in sales to the No. 11 spot, while fun. remained strong, adding almost 11,000 more sales to its total of Some Nights and rising from No. 33 to 27. Notable debuts included Sara Bareilles at No. 8 with 31,000 of Once Upon Another Time and Kimbra at No. 12 with 22,000 of Vows.
Adam Lambert topped the charts this week, selling just under 78,000 units of Trespassing. Adele came in second, with Carrie Underwood, Norah Jones and Tenacious D rounding out the top 5. Best Coast debuted at No. 24 with 12,000 copies sold of The Only Place, and fun. added another 11,000 units to its total for Some Nights.
