Justin Timberlake Album Was the Top Seller in a Diminished Market

[jobeterob]

January 3, 2014, 1:05 pm 1 Comment

Justin Timberlake Album Was the Top Seller in a Diminished Market

By ALLAN KOZINN


Justin Timberlake performing at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in November.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Justin Timberlake performing at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in November.

The year-end chart news is mixed for Justin Timberlake. On the bright side, “The 20/20 Experience” [[RCA), the comeback album he released in March, was the top selling album of 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

But in reporting the year’s best-selling recordings, Billboard noted that Mr. Timberlake’s album, which sold 2.43 million copies, had the lowest sales of any yearly chart-topper since Nielsen began reporting sales figures in 1991. The best-selling album of 2012, Adele’s “21” [[XL/Columbia), sold 4.41 million. The Adele album was also the best seller for 2011, with 5.82 million sales.

All told, the sales picture in the report is bleak: “The 20/20 Experience” was the only album to sell more than 2 million copies last year, and it is only the second album since 1991 to top the year-end chart with fewer than 3 million sales. The previous low-selling No. 1, and the other to reach the top rung after selling fewer than 3 million, was Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III” [[Cash Money/Universal Motown), which sold 2.87 million in 2008.

Moreover, album sales overall dropped 8 percent in 2013, to 289.4 million from almost 316 million in 2012. Sales of CDs dropped 14 percent over the year, and even digital download sales dropped slightly, to 117.58 million from 117.68 million. The drop in downloads was the first since Nielsen began tracking them in 2003. About 41 percent of all album sales were downloads, up from 37 percent in 2012. And vinyl remains a growth industry: Nielsen SoundScan reported 6.1 million sales of vinyl LPs, up 33 percent since 2012.

The year’s other best sellers included Eminem’s “Marshall Mathers LP 2” [[Interscope), which holds the No. 2 spot with sales of 1.73 million; Luke Bryan’s “Crash My Party” [[Capitol Nashville), which sold 1.52 million to reach No. 3; Imagine Dragons’s 2012 album, “Night Visions” [[Interscope), at No. 4, having sold 1.4 million; and Bruno Mars’s “Unorthodox Jukebox” [[Atlantic) as the fifth top-selling album with about 1.4 million sales.

Mr. Timberlake’s “20/20 Experience” also topped the download sales chart with 1.03 million sales. Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” [[Daft Life/Columbia) was the best selling vinyl album, with sales of 49,000.

[kenneth]

Very interesting article. I'm happy about the fact that vinyl is a growth industry. I would buy more new vinyl, but it is so expensive now. A double LP is usually close to $30, whereas a CD might be $15 at the most [[and usually the CD length requires two vinyl LPs). So although I do buy some, it's sometimes hard to justify spending that much extra funds.

[Jimi LaLumia]

it's not a diminished market.. it IS the market, this is the new normal!

[soulster]

I think it's still a bit too early to determine exactly what happened in 2013 with overall music sales. But, I am pleased that people still appreciate good dance and R&B music made with [[mostly) real instruments and musicians, and are willing to pay for it. It's no accident that Daft Punk's album was the #1 seller on vinyl. The album was recorded, mix, and mastered very well with lots of bass.