Yes, the mystery continues. How in the world could Mariah Carey's "E=MC2", an album from 2008 that is almost out of stock completely at amazon.com, be number 1 suddenly on iTunes? iTunes, don't forget, measures downloads, not streaming.
Sales of CD and downloads from Friday through Sunday night, according to Buzz Angle Music, came to just 677 copies. If you count in streaming - which iTunes doesn't - total sales have been 1,200.
Compare all of this to the Number 2 album on iTunes at this moment, Fiona Apple's "Fetch the Bolt Cutters". It's sold 2,200 CDs and downloads since Friday. That's three times as much as Mariah's album. Fiona's total sales since Friday including streaming are 4,100.
It doesn't take Einstein to figure out something is very wrong. I'm not saying Mariah knows what's happening, or has sanctioned this onslaught of iTunes. But this occurred once before, when her "Glitter" album inexplicably took off after 20 years of dormancy. It could be fans just hitting buy on iTunes over and over. But why? It's clearly a fraud. Something is going on with iTunes, that's for sure.
And here's an interesting note. According to Buzz Angle, Carey fans may have tried this back on February 14th. That one week, "E=Mc2" vaulted up in digital sales, didn't quite make it, and fell back to Earth. So this is the second time someone has tried to manipulate sales of the album. This time, it worked. Let's see what happens next.
PS Here's the projected top 5 this week from Hitsdailydouble.com. "E=MC2" is not even in their top 20.
1. Youngboy Never Broke Again (NBA/Atlantic) 65-75k
2. DaBaby (Interscope) 50-55k
3. Lil Uzi Vert (Generation Now/Atlantic) 50-55k
4. The Weeknd (XO/Republic) 50-55k
5. Lil Baby (Quality Control/Motown/Capitol) 40-45k
(Showbiz 411)
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