Among the various issues facing reality-based America today, like a destructive furor over very necessary health-care reform, the equating of needed government services and functions as the evils of socialism by various benighted wing-nuts, the continued buttressing of parasitic Wall Street entities by both sides of the aisle in Congress, distorted support for various right-wing beliefs fomented by the mainstream media, and so on, this is very small potatoes. But it's very telling at the same time.
Unless you've had your televisions off for the month of September, you're undoubtedly aware that The Beatles, that little rock and roll band from Liverpool who used to be big in the 1960s, just released their entire catalogue in upgraded form a week ago. The new sales figures were published yesterday, September 16, in America's long-standing measure of sales success in their chosen field, Billboard, owned by the highly-influential and successful ratings company for all manner of mainstream media outlets, Nielsen Business Media. Since the Beatles' back catalogue of 1960s albums are obviously more than 18 months old, they cannot qualify for the main albums chart, the Billboard 200. Those sales are tallied in the 'Catalog Albums' chart, in which the Beatles hold 13 of the top 14 positions, and 16 of the top 25, The Beatles 1 and Love pulled back onto this chart as well. As new items the box set The Beatles in Stereo comprising 14 albums in toto, and a different box with the eleven of those in mono format, The Beatles in Mono, do appear on the main chart, currently at #15 and #40 respectively.
There are separate album charts for R&B, Country, Adult Contemporary, Rap, Alternative, Comedy, and various other categories. There's also one called the Comprehensive Albums chart, which tallies all albums sales regardless of category. This used to be placed more prominently in the drop-down list, but since Billboard recently changed its on-line format, it's no longer on the site map.
Billboard stated in this article that the Beatles sold about 600,000 units to the #1 Jay-Z at about 500,000. However, in an article that apparently has already been taken off the site, a disclosure was given for the top ten on the Billboard 200 and the Beatles for the week in terms of albums sold, or units shifted, rounded to four figures. The Top Ten looked like this, with Jay-Z out-selling the competition by a large margin:
#1 Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 500,000
#2 Miley Cyrus The Time of Our Lives 120,000
#3 Whitney Houston I Look to You 88,000
#4 Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. 2 68,000
#5 Brooks and Dunn ...And Then Some 55,000
#6 Trey Songz Ready 45,000
#7 Black Eyed Peas The E.N.D. 44,000
#8 Boys Like Girls Love Drunk 41,000
#9 Kings of Leon Only by the Night 40,000
#10 Taylor Swift Fearless 33,000
The two box sets, The Beatles in Stereo and The Beatles in Mono, sold respectively 26,000 and 12,000 copies each. But this tally is misleading, since the stereo box comprises 14 albums, and the mono box 11 albums. If counted in terms of total albums sold, the real amounts for the two box sets are 364,000 units shifted for The Beatles in Stereo and 132,000 for The Beatles in Mono. This would place them at #2 and #3 on the Billboard 200 for the week.
Individually, the Beatles album figures are given below.
Abbey Road 89,000
Sgt. Pepper 74,000
White Album 60,000
Rubber Soul 58,000
Revolver 46,000
Help! 39,000
Past Masters 31,000
Magical Mystery Tour 30,000
A Hard Day’s Night 29,000
Please Please Me 23,000
With the Beatles 22,000
Beatles for Sale 21,000
Let It Be 32,000
Yellow Submarine 14,000
This is also misleading, because the stereo box set contains each of the above albums, which means that each Beatles album sold an additional 26,000 copies on top of the above figures. The mono box duplicates eleven of the albums, a mono Past Masters identical to the stereo minus one song, "Let It Be," which adds an additional 12,000 copies to those albums. The true tally looks like this:
Abbey Road 89,000 + 26,000 = 115,000
Sgt. Pepper 74,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 112,000
White Album 60,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 98,000
Rubber Soul 58,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 96,000
Revolver 46,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 84,000
Help! 39,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 77,000
Past Masters 31,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 69,000
Magical MT 30,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 68,000
Hard Day’s 29,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 67,000
Please Please Me 23,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 61,000
With the Beatles 22,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 60,000
Beatles for Sale 21,000 + 26,000 + 12,000 = 59,000
Let It Be 32,000 + 26,000 = 58,000
Yellow Submarine 14,000 + 26,000 = 40,000
So, the top 25 slots in the Billboard 200 really looks like this:
#1 Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 500,000
#2 Miley Cyrus The Time of Our Lives 120,000
#3 The Beatles Abbey Road 115,000
#4 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper 112,000
#5 The Beatles White Album 98,000
#6 The Beatles Rubber Soul 96,000
#7 Whitney Houston I Look to You 88,000
#8 The Beatles Revolver 84,000
#9 The Beatles Help! 77,000
#10 The Beatles Past Masters 69,000
#11 The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour 68,000
#11 Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt. 2 68,000
#13 The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night 67,000
#14 The Beatles Please Please Me 61,000
#15 The Beatles With the Beatles 60,000
#16 The Beatles Beatles for Sale 59,000
#17 The Beatles Let It Be 58,000
#18 Brooks and Dunn ...And Then Some 55,000
#19 Michael Jackson Number Ones 45,000
#19 Trey Songz Ready 45,000
#21 Black Eyed Peas The E.N.D. 44,000
#22 Boys Like Girls Love Drunk 41,000
#23 The Beatles Yellow Submarine 40,000
#23 Kings of Leon Only by the Night 40,000
#25 Taylor Swift Fearless 33,000
This includes the figures on Michael Jackson's Number Ones from the Catalog Chart courtesy the deleted article. From these totals, the Beatles actually sold 1,064,000 albums this week according to Billboard, more than double Jay-Z although they needed fourteen albums to do it.
Is this important? Only in the fact that the Nielsen uses as its main chart the Billboard 200 covering albums no more than 18 months old, rather than the Comprehensive Chart which it has conveniently left off the web-site. Anyone with a basic understanding of sets in mathematics knows that the Comprehensive Chart should be the main chart, and not one that covers a specific categorical subset, such as one only for recent releases. But then the corporate entities that determine these things wouldn't be fulfilling their mission of keeping American consumers in the perpetual now of marketing, concentrating just on current products and current profits.
Since so many industries rate their health and profitability via various kinds of surveys, ratings, and demographic analyses, how many other information sources leave off inconvenient information to deliberately skew sales data toward what Corporate America wants to be the focus? Not that this is a new point, but here's more evidence of it.