Madonna may be selling out venues around the world, but her latest album, MDNA, is severely struggling.
Madonna MDNA
Now in its ninth week on the charts, the former number one has dropped all the way to number 105, an area that normally means sales for the week have been a little over a thousand. The fact is, the album was never a big seller, getting a good portion of its first week sales of 359,000 from the free copies given away when fans bought tickets for the tour. That led to an 88% drop in sales in the second week and a continued slide to its current position.
The number of physical copies that are sitting on shelves can be pretty much determined by the prices that are being asked for the album on Amazon. The mega-online-retailer not only sells its own stock of albums but also allows its “associates” to sell through their site.
Amazon itself has dropped the clean version of the album to $3.25 (to be fair, the regular edition is still at $9.99 while the deluxe edition is $13.49) but the real discounts are with their associates. Five are selling the album for below a dollar with the lowest being 42 cents (plus $2.98 shipping and handling). Another nine have it for under $2.00.
Even the Standard Edition is being deeply discounted by some associates, as low as $3.13.
These are unprecedented numbers for an release that is less than three months old and is equivalent to seeing an album in the cut-out bins at old record store chains just weeks after release.
Luckily, Madonna remains an electrifying live performer, something she may need to depend on in the future.
