2003 Top Selling Albums Chart in the US
Rapper 50 Cent‘s solo debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, was 2003’s best-selling album in the US, with 6.5 million copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Mr. Cent’s remarkable comeback aside, it was another down year for the perennially downcast music business. CD album sales were down 2 percent, from 649.5 million jewel boxes sold in 2002 to 635.8 million in 2003. Overall album sales (presumably including the cave people who still buy audio cassettes and LPs) were down 3.6 percent.
Indicative of the industry’s doldrums, these numbers actually represent hope, in that they weren’t as lousy as usual. CD album sales in 2002, for example, were off 9 percent from the previous year. Apple’s iTunes was one program credited with helping consumers reacquaint themselves with the quaint tradition of buying music. The download service, launched in April, had sold a whopping 25 million songs, at 99 cents a pop, through mid-December.
Pre-American Idol idol Britney Spears’ In the Zone was certified double platinum, indicating 2 million copies sold, by the Recording Industry Association of America, as was Celine Dion‘s One Heart. Demonstrating how the mighty have fallen, though, neither release came close to challenging the two pop tarts’ SoundScan-era blockbusters – Dion’s Falling Into You (10.6 million copies) and Spears’ …Baby One More Time (10.5 million).
Madonna‘s American Life proved to be no match for The English Roses as a sales force. The latter was the M One’s New York Times best-selling children’s book; the former was her latest album which topped out at fewer than 2 million copies sold.
Remarkably, only the top five albums of 2003 sold more than 3 million copies.
Here’s a complete rundown of 2003’s Top 10 best-selling albums, per Nielsen SoundScan:
1. Get Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 50 Cent, 6.5 million copies
2. Come Away with Me, Norah Jones, 5.1 million
3. Meteora, Linkin Park, 3.5 million
4. Fallen, Evanescence, 3.4 million
5. Speakerboxx/The Love Below, OutKast, 3.1 million
6. Dangerously in Love, Beyoncé, 2.5 million
7. Chocolate Factory, R. Kelly, 2.4 million
8. Metamorphosis, Hilary Duff, 2.4 million
9. Shock’n Y’All, Toby Keith, 2.3 million
10. Rush of Blood to the Head, Coldplay, 2.2 million
Source: E! Online