LOS ANGELES - British singer Adele continued her reign atop the Billboard 200 album chart and the Hot 100 songs chart on Wednesday, in a week of low album sales and a lack of new releases, music industry analysts said.
Adele held onto the top spot after selling 95,000 copies last week, breaking yet another record as “21” became the first album since 1993 to reign the charts for 17 weeks.
Last week saw albums with sales lower than 20,000 copies a week entering the top ten chart for the first time in Nielsen SoundScan history, and this week all the albums in the No.6 to No. 10 spots sold less than 20,000 copies in the week. Dave Bakula, senior vice-president of analytics for entertainment at Nielsen, said that while overall sales were still running strong, only down 1 percent from last week, the low figures were due to “a very, very quiet time of year,” paired with a lack of new releases.