Madonna's MDNA On Track For Biggest Second-Week Sales Drop Ever

Album is on pace to suffer an 88 percent drop in week two on Billboard charts.
By Gil Kaufman

Madonna
Photo: PictureGroup/ Evan Agostini

It appears that Madonna fans gave the singer all their luvin' two weeks ago, and had little to spare during the most recent Billboard album sales reporting period.

Though final figures will not be available until Wednesday morning, on Tuesday (April 10), Forbes reported that the "Girl Gone Wild" singer was on pace to put up the biggest second-week sales drop in chart history.

Reporter Roger Friedman wrote that he was told that after debuting at #1 on sales of 359,000 copies in its first week, MDNA is on pace to tumble 88 percent to around 46,000 copies for the week ending Sunday. The piece even calls into question whether Madonna truly topped the charts in the first place, noting that "most" of the first-week sales were for albums included in the sale of tickets to the star's upcoming tour. "That promotion artificially inflated Madonna's numbers, putting her first before Lionel Richie and his Tuskegee album," Friedman claimed.

"I do think that all the people involved in the Madonna ticket-CD deal should apologize to Richie for denying him his rightful place at number 1," he wrote. Madonna has done some high-profile promotion of the album, including playing the Super Bowl halftime show, a pop-in at the recent Ultra Music Festival in Miami, a Facebook interview and Twitter Q&A, but the combination of lukewarm reviews and two singles that failed to gain traction may have done the album in.

If the numbers hold, Madonna's drop will outpace one of her biggest acolytes, Lady Gaga, who suffered an 84 percent dip in week two for Born This Way. (That album's sales were goosed by a discount 99-cent sale in its first week.) Then again, Gaga moved more than 1.1 million copies in her bow.

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