LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The music trade could also be in a summer season stoop. NPR’s Anastasia Tsioulcas studies on lagging gross sales and streams on this week’s Billboard charts.

ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: For a ninth straight week, Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Division” stays at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, however she earned solely 126,000 items this week – down from greater than 2 1/2 million within the album’s first week. Apparently, even hardcore Swifties could lastly be approaching their saturation level.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I CAN DO IT WITH A BROKEN HEART”)

TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) I used to be grinning like I am successful. I used to be hitting my marks, ‘trigger I can do it with a damaged coronary heart.

TSIOULCAS: At No. 2 is Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Onerous And Delicate,” an album which Billboard – maybe lower than charitably – describes this week as a, quote, “non-mover.” It is down 20%.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”)

BILLIE EILISH: (Singing) Birds of a feather, we must always stick collectively. I do know I stated I would by no means suppose I wasn’t higher alone.

TSIOULCAS: At No.s 3 and 4, Don Toliver’s “Hardstone Psycho” and Morgan Wallen’s “One Factor At A Time,” and neither one cracked 77,000 equal album items. If there’s any excellent news this week, it might be for the New Orleans hip-hop duo Suicideboys. They landed their largest chart numbers thus far with “New World Melancholy,” at No. 5, however they hit No. 1 on Billboard’s vinyl albums chart. What could have helped them there – the simultaneous launch of six totally different album variants, together with in shades of inexperienced, grey and gold.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ARE YOU GOING TO SEE THE ROSE IN THE VASE, OR THE DUST ON THE TABLE?”)

SUICIDEBOYS: (Singing) I am beginning to unravel, surrounded by all these snakes and jackals. They hold tempting me to eat the apple. I have to tie up unfastened ends, type these threads right into a tassel.

TSIOULCAS: A quick historical past lesson – promoting coloured vinyl – and, earlier than that, coloured shellac – has been a advertising and marketing technique since almost the daybreak of recorded music. As early because the 1910s, labels like Vocalion have been urgent brightly coloured 78s to draw shoppers. Challengers to Taylor Swift, take be aware. Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR Information, New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “FORTNIGHT”)

SWIFT: (Singing) And for a fortnight there, we have been endlessly. Run into you typically, ask about…

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