2007 Nielsen Numbers: Groban, Eagles, Nickelback, Soulja Boy Lead
The final 2007 Nielsen SoundScan numbers are in, and as predicted, Josh Groban‘s Noel is the year’s best-selling album, moving 3,699,000 copies, while Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em’s “Crank That” was the year’s most successful “digital track” with 2,909,000 downloads and the Eagles were named best-selling group on sales of 3.6 million. The Nielsen year-end report, which tracks nearly everything about 2007’s music industry, came with a few headlines that reek of optimism (“Growth in Overall Music Purchases Exceeds 14%” and “Music purchases in 2007 reached 1.4 billion”) that kind of deflect from the smaller lines that read “Total album sales declined 15% compared to 2006″ and “Digital Music Accounts for 23% of Music Purchases.” Some interesting facts about this year’s results and all album sales since 1991 can be found below, care/of Nielsen.
• Nickelback were played approximately 1,137,738 times on the radio this year, and Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” was radiowaved 436,984 times
• Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” music video had roughly 23 million streams on the Internet • 220 million ringtones were purchased, resulting in $567 million, with T-Pain’s “Buy U A Drank” leading the way, blaring from 2,308,769 cell phones
• Garth Brooks, the Beatles and Mariah Carey are the top-three best-selling artists since SoundScan started keeping track of album sales in 1991
• Shania Twain’s Come on Over, Metallica’s Metallica and Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill are the top-three best-selling albums since 1991.