Another week and another run at history by Taylor Swift: Her album 1989 managed to top the Billboard 200 for the seventh time during its nine weeks on the charts, selling 326,000 full copies and generating 430 multi-metric equivalent albums (MME's). That no. 1 spot moves her into second place all-time for women atop the Billboard 200 with 31 weeks at no. 1, trailing only Whitney Houston and her crazy 46 week total. By managing to stay above 200,000 albums, she trails only Usher and Confessions in terms of consecutive weeks selling at least that total. The R&B star stands at 12 weeks.
Back to the real world: Nicki Minaj kept her no. 2 finish from last week for one more chart period, moving 156,000 MME copies of The Pinkprint. Although Pentatonix sold more full copies of its That's Christmas To Me than Minaj's entry it still came in behind the album overall when streaming and single downloads were considered (sigh. Expect a lot of this in the near future). It finished at no. 3 with 131,000 MME sales.
One Direction, one of the two acts to disrupt Swift's grip on no. 1, also moved 131,000 MME units, 100,000 of which were pure album sales. Sam Smith stays strong in terms of MME with In The Lonely Hour, which moved 121,000 copies. The second act that interrupted Swift, J. Cole and Forest Hills Drive, took no. 6 with 120,000 MME sales in its third week.
Ed Sheeran moved 113,000 MME copies of X, one spot up from the previous week. He's one of the several acts at the end of this week's Top 10 that got nearly 50 percent of their sales from streaming and downloads. Right behind him was Hozier, who totaled 88,000 in sales from 38,000 actual album sales and 50,000 from streaming/single downloads. The Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack took a different approach, selling 80,000 copies of the album and no streams or downloads. Ariana Grande returned to form however, gaining 79,000 MME sales of My Everything, only 33,000 of which were actual album sales.
Does the new metric mean that any new albums were denied entry to the Top 10? Maybe not this week. Fabolous came in at no. 12 with The Young OG Project and it's possible he didn't get more than 33,000 in total album sales. Only one other new album made the 200 in general. You'll find out what during this week's Back of The Billboards segment on Friday.
