Adele has become the first artist since 1993 to spend 17 weeks at the top of the US Billboard 200 after shifting 95,000 copies of her record ‘21‘, in a week which saw sales of just 20,000 being enough for a place in the US top 10 for the first time in Nielsen SoundScan history.
Dave Bakula, senior vice-president of analytics for entertainment at Nielsen, which compiles figures for the US charts, has said that while sales have been slow recently, the album market remains in a stronger position than it was twelve months ago.
“The album industry as a whole still has better strength than there was last year,” Bakula said. “You’ve got that one record at the top with Adele that still drives people to buy nearly 100,000 copies a week and that provides a really great story. It would be absolutely essential for us to get some more depth of new releases out there, some more people in the stores.”
The news follows a similar pattern to those being reported in the UK, with a further decline in year-on-year albums sales confirmed for 2011.
