This week, for the first time ever, the number one album in Australia sold less than 5000 units. Hinder's 'Extreme Behavior' topped the ARIA chart this week with sales of just 4858 units.
The disastrous figure is yet another example of the downturn in the music industry. For a population of 20 million people, while having the number one album might sound prestigious, the reality is that there is no fame factor attached to the figure.To achieve gold album status in Australia you need to sell 35,000 units. For platinum, it is 70,000. With the downturn in music sales, fewer albums than ever before are actually selling to those figures although certain labels still feel the need to "ship gold" to keep up the illusion of success.
The Australian music industry still sticks by its misleading policy of awarding Gold and Platinum based on what is sold into stores, not what the general public buys. To construct the illusion of a Gold selling album, a label needs only to distribute 35,000 units into a store, grab the Gold award, and then have the store ship back the unsolds. It is akin to a horse winning the Melbourne Cup before leaving the stalls. However, ARIA still does not have a retrospective policy for awards following returns.
Looking down the chart, the figures become even more appalling. Number 10 by Fall Out Boy sold less than 3000 units (2911 to be exact). Number 20 by The Killers sold 1615 units ... and that is nationally.
Number 40 sold less than 1000 units. Take That's 'Beautiful World' sold 920 units across the country.
Number 100, the Step Up soundtrack sold 384 units.
The number one single in Australia this week was Silverchair's 'Straight Lines'. It sold just 3622 physical singles out of stores but with downloads added in the number increased to 7927 units.
However, the number 40 single by Scissor Sisters sold just 249 units. Imagine that, 249 singles sold and you make the Top 40. Number 100 nationally sold just 35 units. In fact, so did number 99 and number 98.
Downloads are quickly replacing the CD single in Australia. Silverchair's 'Straight Lines' sold more downloads than CDs in the last week. Pretty much across the singles chart, downloads are selling more than the CD counterpart.
The combined top 10 albums sold just over 40,000 units combined in the last week. Sadly, that's not much more than one gold record collectively.
