America Online's recent $145 billion purchase of Time Warner sparked even more industry chatter about how the Internet was going to revolutionize the music business with its ability to expose and market artists to a vast new audience. That may be true in the near future, but right now it's an old-fashioned mass medium called television that provides the surest way for artists to boost their weekly sales tallies.

From the American Music Awards, to VH1's Behind the Music, to Saturday Night Live, it was the folks who made televised performances and award acceptance speeches that dominated last week's sales stories. And, once again, Santana was the biggest winner of all. After taking home Favorite Album honors on ABC's primetime telecast of the AMAs, Santana's Supernatural enjoyed a fifteen percent sales jump and remained No. 1 on the nation's albums sales chart for the week ending Jan. 23, according to SoundScan.

Other artists glad they made their way to the AMAs include Dr. Dre, whose Dr. Dre 2001 jumped from No. 7 to No. 3; Savage Garden, whose Affirmation climbed from No. 19 to No. 15; and Eminem, whose nearly one-year-old Slim Shady gained new life, climbing from No. 73 to No. 54.

Meanwhile, VH1's new Behind the Music episode on the life and times of Celine Dion evidently boosted sales for the diva's latest album by fifteen percent over the previous week. All the Way: A Decade of Song is currently lodged at No. 2. And soul singer Macy Gray can thank her recent performance on SNL for jacking her critically acclaimed On How Life Is to a new peak of No. 32.

Just two new albums debuted inside the top fifty, with the updated soul sound of Jagged Edge and their J.E. Heartbreak coming in at No. 8, while the world dance sounds of Enigma's Screen Behind the Mirror debuted at No. 33.

From the top, it was Santana's Supernatural, selling 200,000 copies; Celine Dion's All the Way: A Decade of Song (160,000); Dr. Dre's Dr. Dre 2001 (143,000); Christina Aguilera's Christina Aguilera (124,000); DMX's And Then There Was X (115,000); Eiffel 65's Europop (102,000); Now That's What I Call Music, Vol. 3 (101,000); Jagged Edge's J.E. Heartbreak (86,000); Backstreet Boys' Millennium (85,000); and Jay-Z's Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter (81,000).

ERIC BOEHLERT
(January 26, 2000)