More than 450,000 albums and two million individual songs were sold on iTunes worldwide, according to Apple, since the Beatles catalog was made available Tuesday (Nov. 16). In U.S. the best-selling album was “Abbey Road” and best-selling song was “Here Comes the Sun,” reports “Billboard” (http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i39b5c49ccd74a21f12815b9fb843970c).
U.S. album sales totaled 119,000 units, which included 13,000 digital box sets, while individual digital track sales reached 1.4 million, the article — quoting “industry sources” — says. Said sources say the U.S. album sales tally of 119,000 counts each box set as one unit, while Apple’s worldwide album sales tally counts each box set as multiple sales units, although it wasn’t immediately clear how many units each box set accounted for.
“Billboard” notes that the Beatles’ debut-week sales on iTunes compare favorably with the first-week sales of previous iTunes holdouts. When Led Zeppelin’s catalog made its digital debut in November 2007, the band generated total U.S. digital album sales of 47,000 units, which included sales of 33,000 units of the two-volume hits compilation “Mothership,” which was released the same week, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
