The Eagles Outsell Britney Spears for No. 1 Spot

Authored by Scott Goldberg on November 7, 2007 - 11:24am.

Thanks to a rule change by Billboard allowing The Eagles to count sales of its new WalMart-exclusive album Long Road out of Eden, the band’s first studio release in 28 years outsold Britney Spears’s Blackout to earn the No. 1 spot, according to Nielsen SoundScan’s weekly report. Billboard announced yesterday that it would count the sales of albums sold exclusively in single venues like WalMart.

Estimates for sales of Eden place the album at 711,000 units, compared to Spears’s 290,000, which was far below estimates released yesterday. Fox News released a report saying Blackout had sold between 325,000 and 350,000.

The Eagles’ numbers compare favorably to other No. 1’s this year, especially considering the band occupies a different audience set than other acts who have held the spot in 2007. Bruce Springsteen’s Magic, a collaboration with the E Street Band, sold 335,000 copies in the week ending October 7th. Kanye West’s Graduation sold 957,000 copies in its first week, and 50 Cent, who also released a new album that week, sold 691,000 copies.

For Spears the numbers are a significant drop compared to other albums. 2003’s In the Zone, for example, sold 609,000 copies its first week.

Photo from http://www.eaglesband.com