USA: RECORD INDUSTRY HOPE THAT RELEASE OF TOP NAME MUSIC ALBUMS WILL HELP MUSIC STORES IN PRE CHRISTMAS SALES

Record ID: 388070

  • Title: USA: RECORD INDUSTRY HOPE THAT RELEASE OF TOP NAME MUSIC ALBUMS WILL HELP MUSIC STORES IN PRE CHRISTMAS SALES
  • Date: 25th November 1998
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) DAVID SALAS, A MANAGER AT VIRGIN MEGASTORE: "There's a lot of competition, but you have really strong competitors right now with Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Alannis Morissette of course; George Michael has a greatest hit cd out as well, so it should be pretty interesting to see if he makes it on top. PAN DOWN FROM TELEVISION MONITOR IN STORE PLAYIN
  • Embargoed: 10th December 1998 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS MUSIC VIDEO LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA5BODRKF0RQUYFEF4M9NDTXIOL
  • Story Text: With talk of a recession still in the air, shopowners in the United States and Europe are waiting anxiously for the crucial Christmas selling season.
    Record store owners in the United States though are still counting the benefits of so-called Super Tuesday last month...
    when a series of top name albums were released.
    Deep-pocketed music fans sent the cash registers ringing to buy releases from Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, Jewel, Method Man...and others.
    Yet while record labels viewed the one day (November 17) push as savvy marketing, fans were just happy to be able to buy their favourite music.
    Based on early estimates, overall sales action was brisk for the week, with the top 15 albums all selling more than 100,000 copies and the top 3 albums - from Brooks, Method Man and Jewel - posting greater combined sales than the seven remaining discs in the top 10 combined.
    While Brooks on November 17 may have set a record for one-day sales with a little more than 500,000, it appears his luck did not hold for the six-day period that ended November
    The country music star and his label executives were aiming for a tally topping 1 million units.According to Billboard magazine Brooks' Capitol Nashville disc "Double-Live" may log 935,000 copies for the week - an impressive tally, but short of the first-week record (950,000 copies) logged by Pearl Jam's "Vs" in 1993.
    Huge retail stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart end their survey period on Friday, rather than Sunday as do all other accounts, so Brooks' first-week tally may have actually been higher: discs sold on the weekend are technically not included in the tallies that are released Tuesday (November 25).
    The second-bestselling album for the week was Method Man's Def Jam disc "Tical 2000: Judgment Day," which racked up over 441,000 copies, according to projections.In some music-specialty stores, this offering from the Wu-Tang Clan member outsold Brooks by wide margins.
    Poet and Atlantic Records songstress Jewel nabbed the No.
    3 rung on the sales chart with a first-week total of more than 335,000 copies for her "Spirit" disc, beating the tally of Offspring's "Americana" by more than 100,000 copies for the same period.
    The highest-ranking holdover from the previous week was Celine Dion's 550/Epic Records disc "These Are Special Times,"
    which slid two slots to No.5, but posted a 6,000-unit increase over the last chart to more than 189,000 copies, according to projections.
    Dion's tally outpaced Alanis Morissette's Maverick Records disc "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie," which slid to No.6 from its two-week perch as the top-selling album in the nation and went home with 183,000 copies.
    At No.7 was the bow from Ice Cube at 167,000 copies, which was sufficient to check in ahead of Mariah Carey's Columbia Records best-of set, ".1's," by around 6,000 units.
    Rapper Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life...Vol.II" slid four slots to No.9 on sales action of just over 150,000, according to retailers, but gave Def Jam its second album in the top 10.
    RCA ensemble 'N-Sync's eponymous debut checked in with a projected tally of around 147,000 copies, while Whitney Houston's Arista Records disc "My Love Is Your Love," failed to crack the top 10 on sales, just reaching the 105,000 unit mark.
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