Take That proved to be the runaway winners in a year of mixed fortunes for the albums market in 2010 After scoring the number two albums of 2006 and 2008 with Beautiful World and The Circus respectively, Take That finally and decisively top the rankings for 2010 with their Robbie Williams reunion album Progress proving a worthy champion.
Selling 518,601 copies on its first week – a 21st century record – Progress soared to number one and stayed there for six weeks, selling 1,841,148 copies in 48 days before the year’s end. With catalogue sales bringing the group’s overall tally to 2,292,324, they were also the year’s biggest-selling act, an honour previously achieved in 2008.
Progress outsold all of 2010’s artist album releases by a margin of more than 1m copies. Its nearest challengers – and the only other albums to sell more than 1m copies in the year – were 2009 releases Crazy Love by Michael Buble (1,227,909 sales) and The Fame by Lady GaGa (1,051,909). Both also sold 1m units in 2009, when it was The Fame that was number two and Crazy Love at number three, positions reversed in the latest frame. They were among seven albums to remain in the Top 75 for the whole of 2010, alongside Biffy Clyro’s Only Revolution, Kings Of Leon’s Only By The Night, Mumford & Son’s Sigh No More, Paulo Nutini’s Sunny Side Up and Pixie Lott’s Turn It Up.
Naturally, these albums contributed 52 weeks apiece to the artists’ tally for the year but the act to spend most weeks on the chart was Glee Cast, whose dizzying release schedule brought them seven chart albums (five of them reaching the top five), sales of 1,106,781 and 95 weeks in the Top 75 during 2010. Paulo Nutini (91 weeks) and Michael Buble (81) were their nearest challengers.
Among 2010 releases, Rihanna’s Loud was Progress’s closest rival, powering to sales of 839,608 in the last 48 days of the year, as Only Girl (In The World) then What’s My Name revealed themselves to be smash hits. Loud has already eclipsed the sales of her 2009 album Rated R.
Susan Boyle, who topped the 2009 rankings with her debut album I Dreamed A Dream, ranks 13th with follow-up The Gift, which racked up sales of 556,933 in the last few weeks of the year.
For all the efforts of the above, album sales declined 7.01% year-on-year to 119,906,678 – their lowest level since 1997 and 26.60% below 2004’s record of 163,405,658.
While Take That provided the year’s zenith, Christina Aguilera furnished its nadir, with her Bionic album topping the list in June on sales of just 24,301 copies. Finishing in 223rd position for the year with sales of 63,980 copies, it helped to keep the average sales of a number one album down to 87,528 for the year as a whole. That is below the 2000-2010 average of 101,780 and the lowest figure for any year in the 21st Century, replacing 2003, when the average was 88,413. The average weekly sale at number 75 in the chart was 2,979; this, too, was a 21st Century low, undercutting 2000’s 3,022. The lowest sale to earn a chart placing last year came in week 36, when Abba’s Gold: Greatest Hits achieved anchor position with just 1,808 sales.
There were significantly fewer artist albums with sufficient appeal to chart than in recent years, with the number appearing in the Top 75 down sharply to 460 from 571 in 2009. More worryingly, only 134 artist albums sold more than 100,000 units, compared to 153 in 2009 and 167 in 2008.
Although CD sales were off 12.4% year-on-year, dipping to 98,545,373, downloads increased 30.61% to 21,023,066, increasing their share of the overall market from 12.48% to 17.53%. Vinyl remained niche, with overall sales of 236,988 earning it a share of just 0.19% (less than one sale in 500) but it increased sales for the fourth year in a row, reaching its highest level since 2006. Jimi Hendrix’s Valleys of Neptune topped the vinyl countdown with sales of 3,076 copies. Mumford & Son’s Sigh No More topped the download chart, with sales of 165,127 copies in the year, representing 23.23% of its total sales. Sales of 1,701,506 made Progress the runaway CD champ.
The Top 100 artist albums sold a combined 33,278,316 copies – 9.99% less than in 2009, a fact that suggests catalogue and uncharted albums weathered the downturn slightly better.
Universal has had more albums among the year’s Top 100 than any other company every year thus far in the 21st Century – but not in 2010, as their tally of 32 (down from 40) was matched by Sony. Fellow majors EMI and Warner Music have stolen share from Universal, with the former improving from 7% to 13% and the latter from 16% to 19%, while indies’ share falls from 5% to 4%.
Although rock music’s share of the singles market has slumped, it remains a strong second to pop in the album sector, with a 27% share of the Top 100. Pop also drifted a little, from 46% to 44%, with urban (up from 10% to 16%) taking up the slack.
The compilation sector has suffered sa bigger downturn than the artist album market in recent years, with the easy availability of downloads providing punters with a cheaper and more cost-effective way of purchasing elusive tracks than springing for an entire album.
It was another tough year for compilations, with sales tumbling 10.69% to 22,386,403. That is 42.54% below the 38,958,903 compilations sold in the format’s peak year of 2004. In the same period, artist album sales have fallen only 25.12%, from 124,446,753 to 93,195,170.
Only 28 compilations sold more than 100,000 copies in 2010, compared to 41 in 2009 and 53 in 2008. Providing the top three albums in the category, as is customary, Now That’s What I Call Music! proved an honourable exception to the declining sales seen elsewhere, with its regular releases (Now! 75, Now! 76
and Now! 77) drawing 2,571,941 sales – up 6.65% on their 2009 equivalents’ total. Now! 77 made the biggest contribution, selling 1,195,244 copies in the last seven weeks of the year.
http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=2&storycode=1043812&c=3
