Over The Counter: Chart Floor Slides; Ross Rules, Aguilera Warms Up

Music industry executives typically fixate on numbers at the top of The Billboard 200, but a summer already marked by troublesome milestones finds the latest cause for concern at the chart's lowest rung.

To go along with such dubious distinctions as the lowest Nielsen SoundScan week for an album that debuts at No. 1 and the smallest sales week for a No. 2 album in the SoundScan era, we can now add the smallest total by a No. 200 album.

If you round the numbers, as Billboard typically does, the total at No. 200 would be 4,000, entirely fair since Dirty Pretty Things' "Waterloo to Anywhere" misses that total by only a single copy.

That said, even at 3,999 units, this marks the first time since May 1991, when The Billboard 200 switched to SoundScan data, that the raw number at any spot on the chart starts with a number lower than 4,000.

The previous low tide was not much larger than this week's sum at No. 200: Paul Overstreet's total was 4,034 when his "Heroes" sat at the bottom of the chart in the June 15, 1991, issue.

(Billboard rounds a title's SoundScan figures to the nearest 1,000, a condition waived here to chronicle this detail.)

The average at the chart's floor to this point of 2006 has been 4,843 copies, compared with 5,326 through the 32nd week of 2005. The parade of big releases that invades the final quarter of any year raised that average to 6,004 by the last frame of 2005.

Since the May 25, 1991, issue—Billboard's first SoundScan week—there have been only 100 weeks when the No. 200 album sold fewer than 5,000 units. The first eight months of 2006 account for 21 of those 100 weeks.

The chart's lowest sales figure happens in the same summer when a Johnny Cash album was able to lead the chart with a week of fewer than 90,000 copies; when Los Lonely Boys needed only 67,000 to bow at No. 2; and when album volume for a sales frame fell below 9 million units for the first time in a dozen years.

Those alarming numbers help explain why retailers and even some music company executives griped long and loud about the paucity of meaningful albums released in the early months of this year when music sellers gathered at the recent NARM convention.

Other factors are at play, sure, including the growth of digital track sales and the consumer's ability to grab music without paying for it, but those factors were already in the game in 2004, when Usher's "Confessions" sold 8 million copies in less than 10 months' time.

Usher's career-best year, when three other albums sold more than 3 million copies, marked the only time since 2000 that album sales were larger than those of the prior year. The year 2004 should serve as a reminder of how important it can be to include big artists during the first eight months of a year.



'MIAMI' NICE: Even if the numbers are soft at the bottom of the big chart, relative newcomer Rick Ross raises the roof at the top of The Billboard 200.

His first set for Island Def Jam sells 187,000 in its opening week, the chart's largest sales frame in four weeks.

Christina Aguilera will raise the stakes even higher next issue. Based on chains' first-day sales, RCA Music Group estimates her new "Back to Basics" will open north of 330,000 copies. If she hits that range, it will be the second-largest sales frame of the summer, and the biggest total the chart has seen since "Now 22" bowed at No. 1 with 398,000 sold in the July 29 issue.

That projection also gives Aguilera's double-CD outing a shot at her best career week. Her fifth charting album, "Stripped," moved 330,000 when it bowed at No. 2—behind the soundtrack to Eminem's "8 Mile"—in 2002.

Ross' lead track "Hustlin'," which peaked at No. 11 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in the June 24 issue, paved the way for his album's healthy start. His only prior appearance on the singles chart had been as a featured artist on Trina's "Told Y'All" from the "All About the Benjamins" soundtrack, which peaked at No. 64 in 2002.

Earlier this summer, Ross charted with independent album "The Street Catalog: Official Mixtape," which spent two weeks on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, peaking at No. 84.