Apple’s iTunes Store sells 2 million Beatles tracks, 450,000 albums in first week

“The initial Beatles sales figures are in: More than 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs were sold on iTunes worldwide, according to Apple, since the Beatles catalog was made available Tuesday (Nov. 16). In U.S. the best-selling album was ‘Abbey Road’ and best-selling song was ‘Here Comes the Sun,'” Billboard reports.

“Of that tally, U.S. album sales totaled 119,000 units, which included 13,000 digital box sets, while individual digital track sales reached 1.4 million, according to industry sources,” Billboard reports. “Sources say the U.S. album sales tally of 119,000 counts each box set as one unit, while Apple’s worldwide album sales tally counts each box set as multiple sales units, although it wasn’t immediately clear how many units each box set accounted for.”

“The Fab Four’s debut-week sales on iTunes compare favorably with the first-week sales of previous iTunes holdouts,” Billboard reports. “When Led Zeppelin’s catalog made its digital debut in November 2007, the band generated total U.S. digital album sales of 47,000 units… Led Zeppelin’s first-week individual track sales totaled 300,000, according to SoundScan.”

Billboard reports, “Sources say the Beatles/iTunes media campaign is expected to kick into high gear this for Black Friday, with expanded TV advertising in the U.S. and full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Beatles For Sale.