.

Report: Madonna's 'MDNA' Sets Record For Biggest Sales Drop

First-week sales inflated by CDs bundled with concert tickets

April 10, 2012 12:35 PM ET
Madonna's 'MDNA'
Madonna's 'MDNA'

Madonna's new album MDNA is on track to set the record for the biggest second week sales drop in history, Forbes reports. According to Forbes' sources, sales of the album will drop by 88 percent, from 359,000 copies in its first week of release to around 46,000 in its second week in stores.

The album's first-week sales figures were reportedly inflated by CDs that were bundled with the purchase of some concert tickets for her upcoming tour. According to the Hollywood Reporter, 185,000 copies of MDNA were sold as part of the ticket package deal, meaning that only 179,000 copies count as individual album sales. Without these ticket package sales, MDNA would have placed at Number 2 on the charts behind Lionel Richie's Tuskegee, which moved 199,000 copies in that week.

The sales drop for MDNA can largely be attributed to a lack of chart traction for its two singles, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and "Girl Gone Wild," and limited promotion by the singer. Though the singer performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, participated in a Q&A with Jimmy Fallon on Facebook and went on Twitter for a day, she has avoided major television appearances and live performances.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
marketing partners.

X

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

More Song Stories entries »