Lately various countries added track sales and streaming to their national album chart. And from this week on, the biggest music market of the world, the USA, makes the same. The official Billboard Top 200 Album Chart combined now album sales (conversion factor 1:1), digital track sales (10:1) and streaming (1500:1). And it seems that other countries follow this example in the next time. Let us look back in the past: with the breakthrough of the Compact Disc at the end of the Eighties and the earlier Nineties, the global album sales grew strongly with a peak in the second half of the Nineties. But now, for over 10 years the global album sales shrink dramatically. What happened?? The main reason for this decline was the new market of the Digital Tracks! Today many people don't buy a complete album as before, but they looking for the best tunes of an album and purchase only these songs. Since one, two years there's another 'problem'... Streaming! More and more people having a subscription of Spotify or other streaming-providers and buying no longer music in digital or physical formats. That's why the downward momentum of the global album sales accelerated this year and for the first time ever also the digital track sales are on the way down. Several times in the last months i thought about it, to give it up the Global Album Chart, because the worldwide sales fall further and further (certainly also in the coming years). I will summarize again: the Digital Track Sales and Streaming are the reasons for the decay of the global album sales, and that's why we follow the example of the US-Billboard Chart and other... from next year on we'll integrate Track Sales and Streaming tentatively for a hidden Global Album Chart. But the official hitlist on our Media Traffic website remains provisionally a pure sales chart (by popular request), till more countries and key markets switch over to a combined album chart ... and now to the current hitlist: as expected the clear winner of the this week is Australian's rock legend AC/DC. The band is more than 40 years on stage and their 17th studio album 'Rock Or Bust' shoots atop with 806.000 initial sales. Sorted by countries it sold 246.000 in Germany, 171.900 in the USA, 92.800 in United Kingdom, 91.800 in France, 31.000 in Canada, and 26.700 in Australia. In Germany 'Rock Or Bust' is the fastest selling album since more than seven years. Only Herbert Grönemeyer's '12' moved more copies in its first week at retail (March, 2007). Back to AC/DC, their former album 'Black Ice' was a big surprise, when it exploded with stellar 1.762.000 copies in the week 45, 2008. And it sold nearly 7 million copies to date. Taylor Swift's '1989' slides down at no.2 with a 12% sales decline to 334.000 copies, a total of 3.728.000 after only six weeks on the tally. Still at no.3 is this year's most successful Xmas album, 'That's Christmas To Me' by Pentatonix with another 234.000 sales. Second highest debut at no.8 and the clear new no.1 in United Kingdom is former boy-group legend Take That. Their new smash 'III' started with 158.000 units, the most of it from UK (144.500). No.1 in Japan and new at no.13 globally with 81.100 copies is 'Love Ballade' by Exile Atsushi, lead vocalist of the super group Exile. Some additional sales stats: 'Racine Carrée' by Stromae sold 12.000 copies last week and reaches a total of 2.606.000 so far, 'Native' by One Republic sold 16.000 units last week, 1.733.000 so far, 'Ultraviolence' by Lana Del Rey sold 9.000 units last week and has a total of 1.173.000 units so far, 'Xscape' by Michael Jackson sold 1.511.000 copies so far, 5 Seconds Of Summer's self-titled album 1.227.000, and 'Pure Heroine' by Lorde 2.840.000.
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