Twist Is Top All-Time Hit

It's old acts clinging to relevance, and new ones aping them: Critic

(NEWSER) - How dire is the state of mainstream rock? So dire that “Sublime With Rome,” a band with no higher ambition than mimicking Sublime, has had a song on the Billboard charts every week since May. “2011 may well be remembered as the most numbing year for mainstream rock in music history,” declares New York Times critic Jon Caramanica. “Declaring a genre dead is the worst, least imaginative sort of proclamation, so let’s call it zombified.” More»

It's the biggest seller in 5 years

(NEWSER) - Nice week for Taylor Swift: Her Speak Now album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, racking up 1,047,000 sales. (That includes iTunes and the like.) Billboard rounds up some of the milestones:

• It's the biggest single sales week for an album since 50 Cent's The Massacre sold 1,141,000 in 2005. (And the LA Times notes that Swift's feat may be more impressive given the state of the music industry.)

The over-40 set is the mainstay of album sales

(NEWSER) - These days, if you want to sell CDs, you're best off targeting the over-40 crowd. In a bizarre twist on music industry logic, older buyers have become a relatively potent force in music sales. The reason: "Adults don’t steal, because we don’t know how to," one older music producer tells the Boston Globe . “We're still married to the concept of ‘put the CD in the car, put the CD in the library.’" More»

She has strongest US sales week of 2009; best female debut ever

(NEWSER) - Susan Boyle’s Dream has become very real in the US, where her debut album has opened atop the Billboard 200 chart. I Dreamed a Dream sold 701,000 copies, the best sales week for any release this year in the US. Eminem's Relapse previously held the 2009 mark at 608,000. As far as debut albums goes, Boyle's opening week trails only Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle in 1993, which sold 803,000 copies. She now has the record for a female artist. More»

Billboard.com ties MP3 and ticket sales to its famous charts

(NEWSER) - As circulation of its print magazine continues to fall, Billboard is looking to transition to the digital age with an overhauled website designed to be a one-stop shop for pop music, USA Today reports. Billboard.com now allows all visitors, not just subscribers, to look at its 51-year archive of sales charts, and it has integrated those charts with links to artist information, MP3 downloads, and concert tickets. More»