Coldplay Is Living The High Life

Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, Or Death And All His Friends sold 721,000 copies in its first week on store shelves, a tally that easily propelled them to No. 1 on this week’s album charts. And the band’s iTunes-forward sales strategy paid off online as well, with a whopping 288,000 virtual copies of the album being downloaded via legal means. (The band’s 2005 album X & Y also leapt into the digital-albums top 10, moving 6,200 copies; surely Amazon marking it down to $1.99 helped.) Viva La Vida‘s one-week virtual total more than doubles the previous record for one-week digital sales, which was held by Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through The Static; that album shifted 139,000 e-copies in its first week.

Biggest Debuts: Entering the charts at No. 3 was the soundtrack to the soon-to-be-sequeled Jonas Brothers vehicle Camp Rock, which sold 188,000 copies. Katy Perry came in at No. 9 with 47,000 copies of One Of The Boys, a sales total that might hint to her future home in the 99-cent bin. (Compare those numbers to those posted by her current hit, “I Kissed A Girl,” which is No. 1 on the digital tracks chart; it sold about 228,000 copies this week and is (sigh) near the million mark overall. Talk about the pop hits a cultural moment deserves.)

The Offspring sold 46,000 copies of their latest comeback album, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace, and came in at No. 10, while Judas Priest’s double album about Nostradamus came in at a semi-predictable No. 11, selling 42,000 copies.

Notable Jumps: The cash-in reissue of Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad sold 63,000 copies–a 930% jump that was good enough for a leap from No. 124 to No. 7. The album has sold 1.3 million copies to date, which seems like a small total given the omnipresence of “Umbrella” and “Don’t Stop The Music.” Good thing she’s got all those endorsements to back her up.

Dropping Off: Last week’s No. 1, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, took a 69% hit, but it only fell to No. 2 on the overall chart since a one-week sales total of 309,000 is still pretty good in this more-anemic-than-ever market. (Billboard noted that while the year-to-year decline was only 6.7%, the week-to-week decline was 10.6%, or about a million units.)

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Kid Rock continues his Warren Zevon-assisted run back up the album chart, with Rock N Roll Jesus selling 28,000 copies and inching up to No. 16.

This week’s top 20, with sales totals in parentheses: 1. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (721,000) 2. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (309,000) 3. Camp Rock soundtrack (188,000) 4. Now 28 (81,000) 5. Plies, Definition Of Real (68,000) 6. Usher, Here I Stand (65,000) 7. Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad (63,000) 8. Disturbed, Indestructible (59,000) 9. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys (47,000) 10. The Offspring, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (46,000) 11. Judas Priest, Nostradamus (42,000) 12. Journey, Revelation (38,000) 13. Weezer (30,000) 14. 3 Doors Down (29,000) 15. Alanis Morrissette, Flavors Of Entanglement (29,000) 16. Kid Rock, Rock N’ Roll Jesus (29,000) 17. Leona Lewis, Spirit (28,000) 18. Duffy, Rockferry (28,000) 19. Taylor Swift (27,000) 20. N.E.R.D., Seeing Sounds (24,000)

The top 10 digital albums, with sales totals in parentheses: 1. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (288,000) 2. Camp Rock soundtrack (38,000) 3. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (27,000) 4. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys (16,000) 5. The Offspring, Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (11,000) 6. Disturbed, Indestructible (7,200) 7. Alanis Morrissette, Flavors Of Entanglement (6,700) 8. Coldplay, X & Y (6,200) 9. Sex And The City soundtrack (6,200) 10. Weezer (5,900)