http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?s...de=1045423&c=1
[SIZE="3"][US sales back in the black
08:08 | Monday June 6, 2011
By Paul Williams
Year-to-date US album sales moved back into the black last week for the first time in more than five years but it would not have happened without Amazon’s controversial 99 cents Lady GaGa promotion.
Nielsen SoundScan reveals 125.86m albums have now been sold in the States so far this year, compared with 125.42m at the same point in 2010, meaning that the albums market there is up on the previous year for the first time since the chart week ending January 22 2006.
That is a significant turnaround in fortunes given US albums sales have suffered double-digit percentage falls for a number of years, dropping a further 12.8% in 2010 to less than half the size the market was in unit terms in 2004.
But the gap between the number of albums sold so far this year compared with this stage in 2010 is a telling one. It amounts to 440,000 units, which happens to be the estimated number of copies Amazon sold of Lady GaGa’s Born This Way during a promotion that offered the album for just 99 cents.
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GAGA
Sales would be up with out without the Amazon deal.
