Cranberries Top New Internet Album Sales Chart

05/07/1999 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(5/7/99, 1 p.m. PDT) - Those who believe that the Internet won't have a significant impact on the music business, better think again. This week Billboard, the granddaddy of music trade publications, introduces the Top Internet Album Sales chart.

This move is significant because historically Billboard has not been quick to add additional charts to the magazine, preferring to wait until a format or musical genre makes enough of an impact on the overall business to validate the creation of a new chart. Billboard director of charts Geoff Mayfield says that the brain trust at the magazine has been considering such a chart for "quite some time," but "even eight months ago, frankly it didn't take that many units to show up [on an Internet sales chart]."

While the Internet sales numbers still only represent a small fraction of total record sales, the chart does give an interesting glimpse into how the music business may be affected by the rise of web shopping.

The Cranberries' Bury The Hatchet debuted at No. 13 this week on the Billboard 200 with sales of more than 66,300, but it bowed at No. 1 on Billboard's first published Top Internet Album Sales. However, the album achieved the top spot with Internet sales of just more than 1,000 copies, and only 1.8% of its first-week total sales, according to Mayfield.

The Top Internet Album Sales chart certainly paints a different picture than the Billboard 200. For example, the chart-topping Ruff Ryders album Ryde Or Die (LAUNCH, 5/5), doesn't even appear on the top 10 of the Internet chart, while Tom Waits's Mule Variations, which bowed at No. 30 on the overall sales chart, debuts at No. 2 on the Internet chart. Also scoring big on the web was Ben Folds Five's The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner, which debuts at No. 3 on the Internet chart, and No. 35 on the overall sales list.

"It does stand to reason that there would be a different consumer," Mayfield says. "It didn't surprise me that a hip-hop title was big on the Billboard 200 and the Cranberries were big on the Internet chart."

Supplying data to the chart are such e-commerce music sellers as CDnow, Music Boulevard (which will soon be folded into CDnow), Total E.com, CD Universe, and websites hosted by traditional retail outlets like Trans World Entertainment and Best Buy. A glaring admission from the panel is Amazon.com and the Tower Records website. While Amazon, which publishes its own chart, has chosen not to report to SoundScan/Billboard, Tower Records is expected to join the fold soon, after a programming problem is rectified.

A number of dedicated artist sites, including those for Beck, Marilyn Manson, Slayer, and Soul Coughing, as well as the label-run sites of Interscope, Mammoth, Grand Royal, and others, will report to the chart, according to Billboard.

Features on the Cranberries, Ben Folds Five, Marilyn Manson, Slayer, and Soul Coughing are available on LAUNCH.com.

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