Maroon 5 Breathe Easy At No. 1

noah | May 30, 2007 2:30 am
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Smooth-rock revivalists Maroon 5 started making returns on Universal’s investment last week, and their new album It Won’t Be Soon Before Long debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 429,000 copies. Included in that total are 102,000 copies of the album sold through digital distribution channels (the album’s still No. 1 on the iTunes Store), a tally that raised the single-week digital sales bar set by Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight last week.

Biggest Debuts: Ozzy Osbourne’s Black Rain came in at No. 3, selling 152,000 copies; the Young Jeezy-and-his-pals mixtape Cold Summer entered at No. 4, moving 95,000 copies; the Used’s My Chemical Romance dis record Lies For The Liars sold 92,000 copies and entered the chart at No. 5; and the Keith Richards-free soundtrack to the latest Pirates Of The Caribbean movie came in at No. 14, moving 35,000 units.

Charting The Decline: Total sales were down 3.2% from last week (8.35 million from 8.59 million); that’s a nearly 17% decline from this time last year, when album sales totaled 9.98 million units.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Sure, Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight took a 68% sales hit from its debut week on the charts, but that means that, instead of nearly 700,000 people picking up a copy, “only” about 200,000 units were shifted. (And we still don’t know anybody who bought one.) Will Daughtry cease being this section’s perennial? It sold 74,000 copies last week–no doubt aided by the titular baldy’s American Idol appearance on Tuesday night’s pre-finale–and landed at No. 7.

Maroon 5 Nudges Linkin Park From Atop Billboard 200 [Billboard]

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