Album Sales Week of 3/2/10 (Sam Adams Wizzy outsells DJ Khaled digitally!)

14 years ago view-show 834,669

albumsales1.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

album sales week of 3/2/10

DJ Khaled “Victory” – 28,000 (21% digital)
Sam Adams ‘Wizzy’ “Boston’s Boy” 7,615 (100% digital)
B. Dolan “Fallen House Sunken City” – 103

.

Let’s just reflect on Sam Adams Wizzy for a minute.  Not sure how many of you out there follow sales figures, but this kid, a college student from Trinity, came out of nowhere.  With a Tunecore account.  No record deal, no advertising (that I saw), no press (i haven’t seen anything in spin, fader, xxl, or anywhere really), no real blog buzz (no articles on this kid before last week from us, nahright, xxl, rapradar, allhiphop, hiphopdx or any “industry insider” spots).  He’s a full time college student, so I can’t believe that he’s been playing THAT many shows.  No radio play.  His YouTube video has 1.2 million views.  And this weekend, he shot up to the #1 album on iTunes.  His record came out on Thursday, and was priced cheap, as it was an EP with only 8 songs or so.  Almost a full week after coming out, he’s sold 7k+.  He’s currently #3 on the iTunes hip-hop charts, ahead of Lil Wayne’s “Rebirth” and he’s #12 on the overall charts, currently ahead of Vampire Weekend’s “Contra”.

R U SERIOUS????

Now, I’m not pretending that these sales will last. Lil Wayne and Vampire Weekend will easily end up selling probably 10 times what Sam Adams Wizzy will sell.  However, they’ve had way more than 10 times the amount of money laid into their projects and promotions.  Some of you may be saying, “7,000 units first week isn’t that much.”  If you look into the Khaled numbers that I posted above, you’ll realize that 21% digital of the 28k units that he sold is about 6,000 digital units sold.  Since “Boston’s Boy” was only digital, you realize that means that this 22 year-old true freshman in the rapgame outsold DJ KHALED (this is we the best, who’s been around for YEARS and had TONS of radio play, video spins, big-artist co-signs and all that behind him) on iTunes.  Does anyone else find that amazing?  Love or hate his music, you have to admit that this kid is a phenomenon. 7,000 units is no platinum record, but it may just be the start of a career.

.

So… who’s gonna sign him?

.

As usual, get at me with any requests for sales figures.

And look out for “Industry News” posts, where I’ll be discussing what’s going on in the convergence of the social networking, digital and music business worlds.