Top Albums for the Week

Here are the top selling albums for the week ending 03/20/2011.

THIS WEEK RANK	ARTIST	TITLE	THIS WEEK SALES
1	Adele	21	98,076
2	Rise Against	Endgame	84,518
3	Lupe Fiasco	Lasers	46,662
4	Glee Cast	Vol. 5-Glee: The Music	43,467
5	Mumford & Sons	Sigh No More	41,416
6	Justin Bieber	Never Say Never-Remix	33,806
7	Avril Lavigne	Goodbye Lullaby	31,696
8	Various	Now 37	30,227
9	Travis Barker	Give The Drummer Some	28,427
10	Marsha Ambrosius	Late Nights & Early Mornings	27,507

Top Albums for the Week

Here are the album sales for the week ending 03/13/2011.

THIS WEEK RANK	ARTIST	TITLE	THIS WEEK SALES
1	Lupe Fiasco	Lasers	204,168
2	Adele	21	132,719
3	Glee Cast	Vol. 5-Glee: The Music	89,854
4	Avril Lavigne	Goodbye Lullaby	87,089
5	R.E.M.	Collapse Into Now	57,427
6	Sara Evans	Stronger	55,193
7	Mumford & Sons	Sigh No More	45,837
8	Marsha Ambrosius	Late Nights & Early	40,971
9	Justin Bieber	Never Say Never-Remixes	39,947
10	Various	Now 37	32,563

The State of the Music Industry

The bleeding hasn’t stopped for the music industry as album sales plummeted 12.8% and digital track sales flattened to a meager 1% gain for 2010, according to figures issued Wednesday by Nielsen SoundScan. 

Album unit sales dropped to 326.2 million, from 373.9 million units in 2009. The 2010 drop nearly matched 2009's decline of 12.7%.

Overall album sales, physical releases and digital "track equivalent albums" -- fell 9.5%, to 443.4 million units from 489.8 million in 2009. This compared to a drop of 8.5% in 2009.

Just four albums sold more than 2 million units last year; the No. 10 bestseller, Ke$ha's "Animal," barely inched past the 1 million mark, with 1.14 million sold.

In terms of 2010 market share, Universal Music Group led the four majors with 31.4% of albums sold. Sony Music Entertainment ranked No. 2 with 27.4%, with Warner Music Group trailing behind with 19.8% and EMI Music a distant fourth with 9.6%. The independent sector outdid EMI with an 11.6% share.

Rapper Eminem claimed the 2010 album sales championship, moving 3.4 million copies of "Recovery." Country acts trailed only slightly among the top sellers: Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" placed second with 3 million, while Taylor Swift's late-year release "Speak Now" came in a close third with 2.96 million.

Swift was the top-selling album artist of '10, notching total sales of 4.47 million, followed by Eminem (4.32 million), Lady Antebellum (3.85 million), Justin Bieber (3.73 million) and the cast of the Fox series "Glee" (3.6 million). Swift has sold more than 4 million albums per year for the past three years.

Just four albums sold more than 2 million units last year; the No. 10 bestseller, Ke$ha's "Animal," barely inched past the 1 million mark, with 1.14 million sold.