The big story with this week's sales data is the fact that the Hope For Haiti charity album is the first digital-exclusive set to top the Billboard 200. Billboard also points out that "as Hope for Haiti is sold through indie digital distributor INgrooves, it gives the Billboard 200 back-to-back independently distributed No. 1 albums, following Vampire Weekend's Contra last week." So how about that? Hope for Haiti is the 13th "indie" album to top the chart.
And there's even a legitimate indie debut this: Spoon's Transference (Merge). So along with Contra, that makes three independently distributed albums in the top ten. That's gotta be a first, right?
1. "Hope For Haiti" - 171,000 (debut)
2. Susan Boyle - "I Dreamed a Dream" - 86,000 (up 12%; cume: 3,357,000)
3. Lady Gaga - "The Fame" - 62,000 (down 3%)
4. Spoon - "Transference" - 53,000 (debut)
5. "2010 Grammy Nominees" - 49,000 (debut)
6. Vampire Weekend - "Contra" - 43,000 (down 65%)
7. Alicia Keys - "The Element of Freedom" - 40,000 (down 16%)
8. Ke$ha - "Animal" - 35,000 (down 47%)
9. Black Eyed Peas - "The E.N.D." - 35,000 (up 7%)
10. Taylor Swift - "Fearless" - 32,000 (down 5%)
Additional sales data via Yahoo.
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