Adele logs top-selling album and song of 2011
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To the surprise of virtually no one, Adele’s “21” is officially the top-selling album of 2011, with a final tally of 5.82 million copies, while the British soul singer’s single “Rolling in the Deep” was the year’s bestselling song with 5.81 million copies, according to Billboard, based on Nielsen SoundScan’s year-end sales report.
Adele’s album has not dropped out of the Top 10 since it entered the chart at No. 1 in February. It is now in its 14th non-consecutive week as the nation’s top-selling album.
Michael Bublé’s latecomer holiday entry “Christmas” was the No. 2 selling album of the year with nearly 2.5 million copies, followed by Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” (2.1 million), Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter IV” (1.9 million) and Jason Aldean’s “My Kinda Party” (1.6 million).
The remainder of the top 5-selling digital songs behind “Rolling In the Deep” are LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” (5.5 million), Katy Perry’s “E.T.” (4.8 million), Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (4.1 million) and Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything” (3.9 million).
Industry -wide perhaps the best news in the year-end figures is that album sales increased over the previous year for the first time since 2004, up 1% to 330.6 million units, compared to 326.2 million in 2010. Overall music sales, including albums, singles, music video and digital tracks, increased nearly 7% in 2011 compared to a year earlier.
More from Nielsen SoundScan’s year-end report will be reported in Thursday’s Calendar.
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-- Randy Lewis
