Jay-Z’s Platinum Status in Perspective

In Art, Hip Hop, History, Music, News, Opinion, R&B, fame, radio on 14 October 2009 tagged 21st Century Breakdown, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, Green Day, Leah Greenblatt, Live on the Inside, No Line on the Horizon, Sugarland, U2 with View Comments

Since Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 record setting debut five weeks ago, BNW has been tracking the album’s progress on the Billboard 200 Album chart.

This week the album officially surpassed the platinum mark, and now we have this EW article to put the achievement into perspective. Pay attention to the big names who have yet to go platinum and how long it took U2 to go platinum, despite debuting to higher numbers than Jay-Z, while Jay-Z was able to surpass the platinum mark in just under 2 months.

Also, keep in mind that Jay’s fifth week numbers (which represented a 24% drop from the week prior) are only about 10,000 copies away from Sugarland’s #1 debut earlier this year:

U2’s No Line on the Horizon only reached platinum two weeks ago, seven months after its release; neither Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown nor the Dave Matthews Band’s Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King have hit the million-copies mark yet.

According to the Chicago Tribune, more than 115,000 albums were released last year; out of those, only 110 sold more than 250,000 copies.

Album sales in 2009: How hard is it to go platinum today? [Entertainment Weekly]

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