According to SoundScan’s third quarter numbers, there has not been one album by a recording artist to achieve platinum status in 2014. The Frozen soundtrack (3.12 million), Beyonce’ (776,000) and Lorde (754,000) have the top selling albums of the year; however, those projects were released last year.
The top selling albums of 2014 releases so far come from rock band Coldplay and country artist Eric Church, both rounding out at 722,000.
When it comes to singles, they are selling a lot more. Sixty tracks have sold over one million units so far this year, which is a noticeable decrease from last year’s 83 songs to go platinum. Among those are Pharrell’s “Happy,” which topped the list of best selling tracks with 6.2 million in sales, John Legend’s “All of Me” with 4.4 million sold and Katy Perry’s Juicy J-assisted-track “Dark Horse” with 4.3 million sold.
Hip-hop was noticeably left out of this conversation with none of the notable releases of this year being mentioned. With Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West rumored to have releases this quarter, there is still hope for hip-hop to come in and save the day.
