No 2014 Albums Have Gone Platinum Yet

performs onstage during the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 20, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

No 2014 Albums Have Gone Platinum Yet

performs onstage during the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 20, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Even if you don’t follow the weekly chart updates in our Week In Pop column, you probably know music sales are historically low. But did you know not a single album released this year has gone platinum? A new Forbes report points out that the year’s three best-selling albums — the Frozen soundtrack, Beyoncé’s BEYONCÉ, and Lorde’s Pure Heroine — were released in 2013. This year’s best-selling release, Eric Church’s bold mainstream country exploration The Outsiders, has moved about 730,000 copies since debuting in February, and Coldplay’s Ghost Stories is close behind. Presumably both of those will go platinum eventually, but barring a holiday push, Church (pictured) and Coldplay probably won’t make it to 1,000,000 copies shipped before the end of the year.

Given the massive numbers for Taylor Swift’s Red in 2012, it seems like Swift’s rapidly approaching 1989 is the industry’s only hope for a million-seller in 2014. The only other potential platinum scenario I can imagine is if Adele’s long-rumored 25 drops BEYONCÉ-style, or maybe if the promised Kendrick Lamar album materializes.

The article also notes that 60 songs have gone platinum in 2014, down from 83 last year. So it’s not like nobody’s buying albums because everyone’s buying singles instead. They’re just plain buying less. Read more at Forbes.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.]

more from News