What’s Going On With CD Sales??

Well it’s no big secret that CD sales in country music have been on a steady decline lately, and as the album releases continue this fall, we’re not seeing much of an improvement it seems.

Kellie Pickler and Tim McGraw both had albums debut in recent weeks that landed in the #1 spot on the charts – but each of those albums sold less than 45,000 copies in their first week of sales. Tim’s label went as far as reducing the price of the album to $2.99 on iTunes this week. Granted there has been a lot of criticism regarding the release of another greatest hits album from Tim, but the bottom line remains that Tim is a country music superstar. We were expecting more sales than that.

Darius Rucker and Jessica Simpson both landed at the top of the charts with their first country albums and those albums sold roughly 65,000 copies each. While those #’s aren’t good either, they’re higher than Tim and Kellie’s releases and that makes us wonder – are their higher #’s due to the “pop” fans still buying the albums?

Little Big Town’s album was re-released through their new label, Capitol Records, this week and they’re offering a lower price download of the album on iTunes as well – $7.99. (Which, by the way, is a great CD – definitely worth the $7.99!!!) Are we to assume that their first week numbers aren’t what they had hoped?

With three mega-stars dropping albums within the next month – Kenny Chesney (“Lucky Old Sun,” – October 14th) Rascal Flatts (“Greatest Hits,” – October 28th) and Taylor Swift (“Fearless,” – November 11th) – we look to see album sales climb much higher than the other fall releases thus far. How high remains to be seen – we’ll keep you posted.