People Still Buy Music: A$AP Rocky beats out Kidz Bop 23 to land atop the Billboard 200

By Marah Eakin  |  January 23, 2013 | 6:30pm
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People Still Buy Music: A$AP Rocky beats out Kidz Bop 23 to land atop the Billboard 200
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Billboard’s charts keep getting weirder and weirder. While A$AP Rocky’s debut record, Long.Live.A$AP, landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 after selling 139,000 copies in its first week, the No. 2 record is Kidz Bop 23, the latest edition of the compilation series in which comically juvenile voices take on tracks like Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Psy's "Gangnam Style.” That mountain of dreck sold about 78,000 sugary-sweet copies last week. Sadly, this isn’t even the biggest release week for a Kidz Bop record: Kidz Bop 10 sold 117,000 copies the week of Aug. 19, 2006, putting it at No. 3 on the charts. To date, the Kidz Bop series has managed to trick people into buying 13.3 million copies of its rehashed songs.

Equally weird is the fact that the No. 3 record on the Billboard 200 is the soundtrack for the movie Pitch Perfect, which was released on DVD late last year. Taylor Swift’s Red sits at No. 4, Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox at No. 5, and the soundtrack to Les Miserables falls to No. 6. Last week’s No. 1, Chris Tomlin’s Burning Lights, fell to No. 22 after losing 78 percent of its sales from last week.

On the digital songs chart, Justin Timberlake came in at No. 2 with the debut of his new single Suit & Tie. As expected, the track sold around 314,000 copies. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” sits at No. 1 for a second week with 341,000 digital copies sold.

 
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