Here’s an irony for you: A price reduction to 69 cents enabled Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man” to bump “Thrift Shop”—a song about hunting for 99-cent bargains—out of the #1 spot on the Hot 100. Mars’ song was discounted to that price in both the iTunes and Amazon MP3 stores, which put it far below the standard $1.29 price of most current hits. This was a shameless (and effective) bid to give Mars’ hit the final push it needed to reach #1. The song sold 340K copies during the week, which represents a 45% gain over the previous week. “Thrift Shop,” which is the only song in digital history to top 300K in weekly sales nine times, sold 211K during the week, a 25% drop from the previous week.

“When I Was Your Man” is Mars’ fifth #1 on the Hot 100. Mars has amassed his first five #1 hits faster than any male solo artist since Elvis Presley. Mars first charted on Feb. 13, 2010 as the featured artist on B.o.B’s “Nothin’ On You.” Thus, he has piled up five #1 hits in three years and two months. Presley amassed his first five #1 hits in less than a year (March 3, 1956 to Feb. 9, 1957, when “Too Much” bumped Guy Mitchell’s “Singing The Blues” out of the top spot).

Only two other artists have amassed five or more #1 hits since January 2010. Rihanna leads with seven in this young decade. Katy Perry has had six. Among male solo artists, Mars is way out front. Eminem is in second place with two #1 hits since January 2010.

(Wanna know who else has had two or more #1 hits in this decade? Adele has had three. Ke$ha, LMFAO and Maroon 5 have each had two.)

The Voice has been very good for Blake Shelton. The country star’s Based On A True Story… sold 199K copies in its first week, which is more than any previous Shelton album has sold in any one week. (He achieved his previous best when Red River Blue sold 116K copies when it debuted at #1 in July 2011). Prior to the launch of The Voice in April 2011, Shelton had never sold more than 77K copies of an album in one week.

Based On A True Story enters The Billboard 200 at #3, behind Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, which holds at #1 for the second week, and Lil Wayne’s I Am Not A Human Being II, which debuts at #2. Shelton’s album enters Top Country Albums at #1. It’s Shelton’s third #1 album on the country chart. It follows the 2010 EP All About Tonight and Red River Blue.

Phillip Phillips’ “Home” this week surpasses Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” to become the best-selling song ever released by an American Idol alumnus. “Home” has sold 4,262,000 digital copies. “Stronger” has sold 4,245,000.

“Stronger” wore the Idol sales crown for about eight months. It surpassed Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” on July 1, 2012. Underwood’s smash held the title for nearly five years. It surpassed Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” on Aug. 19, 2007. While those three other hits are all sassy and up-tempo, “Home” echoes the rootsy folk-pop sound of Mumford & Sons.

“Home” was Phillips’ “coronation song” on Idol in May, when he was declared the Season 11 winner. The song entered the Hot 100 at #10 in June. It then tumbled down the chart, but got its second wind after NBC featured the song during its coverage of the Summer Olympics in August. The week after the Olympics, it rebounded from #84 to #9. It finally peaked at #6 in January.

The strong showing by “Home” is especially noteworthy because Idol’s ratings have been trending down in recent years. At least 30 million viewers watched the season finale for four straight years (Seasons 4 through Season 7). Fewer than 30 million viewers have watched the season finale the last four years. According to Nielsen, 21.49 million viewers watched the season finale in May, which made it the least-watched finale in Idol history. (The most-watched finale was the Season 2 showdown between Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, which was watched by 38.06 million viewers.)

Justin Timberlake’s third solo album, The 20/20 Experience, enters The Billboard 200 at #1 with first-week sales of 968K. That’s the biggest one-week sales tally since Taylor Swift’s Red sold 1,208,000 copies in its first week in October. It’s the biggest one-week tally by a male artist since Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III opened with sales of 1,006,000 in September 2008. It’s the biggest one-week tally in the first quarter of the year (when sales are generally slower) since 50 Cent’s The Massacre opened with sales of 1,141,000 in March 2005.

The 20/20 Experience also set a new record for the biggest one-week sales tally for an album by a male pop artist since 1991, when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard. This stat excludes R&B (Usher), country (Garth Brooks) and rap (Eminem, 50 Cent and Lil Wayne). Who held the previous record? Try and guess. Details below.

First-week sales projections for Timberlake’s album were revised upward several times, from the initial forecast of 500K on March 11. About the only disappointment for Timberlake is that 20/20 just missed becoming the 19th album to sell 1 million copies in a week since 1991. No album has ever come so close to the magic 1M mark without quite reaching it.