Back in April we reported on the saddest album sales week in Aussie chart history after US metal veterans Disturbed broke the record for lowest selling album ever to go Number 1 in Australia by moving just 2,140 copies of their album Immortalized.
Disturbed broke the record previously set by fellow heavy outfit Bring Me The Horizon, who made it to Number 1 by selling just 3,600 units back in 2010, which was at the time a cause for concern for anybody working in the recording industry.
But it seems it’s all just par for the course nowadays, with CD sales declining ever steeply and even digital sales becoming cannibalised by streaming, which has struck a contentious relationship with both record labels and the artistic community.
As Tone Deaf reported last year, among the biggest sellers to hit No. 1 in 2015 were Taylor Swift, with 19,246 copies of 1989, Florence & the Machine (15,706), Muse (12,047), Tame Impala (11,415), Mumford & Sons (11,038), Parkway Drive (14,700), and Hermitude (10,352).
In fact, many of these albums are still sitting within the Top 100 and even Top 50 albums in the country. Swift’s juggernaut 1989 came in at Number 15 this week, despite being released in 2014 for its 86th week spent on the chart.
However, there is a silver lining to today’s record sales and that’s that there is a constant barrage of albums by Australian artists that make it to the top spot of the chart, including recent releases by Flume, Violent Soho, Northlane, Tame Impala, and now The Temper Trap.
The latter made the top spot this week with their third album, Thick As Thieves, which has been hailed as a return to form for the Melbourne outfit who first came to prominence with 2008’s massive ‘Sweet Disposition’.
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According to figures obtained by Tone Deaf, The Temper Trap managed to move a total of 3,671 units to make the top spot, just 71 more than Bring Me The Horizon sold to go down in the annals of Australian music industry history.
They were followed by Adele’s 25 (2,880), Jimmy Barnes’ Soul Searchin’ (2,442), Beyonce’s Lemonade (2,252), and Meghan Trainor’s Thank You (2,238) rounding out the top five.
We’ve previously asked the question of just how many albums it takes to make Number 1 in Australia and what we found is that there is no real answer since there are so many variables at play affecting your potential chart performance.
The top spot of the ARIA Albums Chart is an accolade whose criteria are variable. It’s worth noting that Disturbed only got their record-making number one because So Fresh Hits of Autumn‘s 4,422 copies don’t register on the Albums Chart.
However, making the Top 20, Top 50, and especially the Top 100 is a feat which is slightly more achievable and ultimately requires a few hundred, if not a few dozen friends armed with iTunes accounts and about $16.99 each.
Let’s take a stroll through the current Top 500 albums chart, shall we? Sitting at the very bottom are, funnily enough, Bring Me The Horizon and their album Sempiternal, which moved just 78 units to make the list of the 500 best-selling albums in the country.
It’s the same for the Best of Sia and the Grease soundtrack, which sit at 499 and 498, respectively. In fact, we don’t hit triple digits until Number 393 with Lee Kernaghan and Spirit Of The Anzacs (100 copies).
Want to be a Top 100 selling artist? You’ll have to beat rock legend Elvis Costello, whose The Best Of The First 10 Years compilation sits in the bottom of the Top 100 after moving a total of 321 copies last week.
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You’ll have to beat out another hits compilation to make the Top 50. Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits currently occupies the Number 50 position after shifting 476 copies last week. This is about the range you’re looking at for a Top 50 album.
What’s more, it may be about to get a whole lot easier for Aussie independent artists to get in the charts. As we reported last month, ARIA are currently gearing up to partner with digital music retailer Bandcamp.
Melbourne’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are among the local artists who rely on Bandcamp for much of their sales, recently shifting 1,500 copies of the deluxe edition of their latest album, Nonagon Infinity, which would have put them in contention for the Top 10 of the Albums Chart.
