Donald Trump on Jackie Evancho’s Album Sales: Fact-Checking His ‘Skyrocketing’ Tweet
Not really much at all.
Have Evancho’s album sales really soared since she was announced as the performer on Dec. 14? It depends on how loose your definition of “skyrocketed” is, although they have posted gains.
Someday at Christmas, Evancho’s most recent studio album, sold 6,000 copies in the chart week ending Dec. 15, according to Nielsen Music, following its Oct. 28 release. After Evancho was announced to be performing at the inauguration, however, Someday at Christmas bumped up to 11,000 copies sold in the week ending Dec. 22 (up a big 94 percent compared to the previous week). In the tracking week after, the album sank slightly back to 8,000 copies sold.
Sales of the album did rise following the announcement — but most holiday albums receive a sales spike in the chart weeks approaching Christmas. For context, Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas saw sales balloon from 139,000 copies sold in the week ending Dec. 15 to 185,000 sold in the week ending Dec. 22. During the latter week, sales of all holiday albums increased by 21 percent, and overall album sales were up 18 percent – increases handily beat by Evancho’s 94 percent gain with her Christmas album that week. (Of course, when a title isn’t selling very much, and then has a burst of unexpected sales, its percentage increase will naturally be quite large – which is what happened with Evancho’s album.)
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