Billboard 200: 3/21/15: Kelly Clarkson #1: 97,000

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www.billboard.com/files/pdfs/Bulletin/march-13-2015-billboard-bulletin.pdf

4,641,000 albums were sold for this chart week in the USA.

2,134,000 were digital albums.

2,507,000 were physical albums (cds, cassettes and vinyl).

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www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6502152/hozier-half-million-album-sales

Billboard 200 Chart Moves: 'Hozier' Has Sold a Half-Million
By Keith Caulfield | March 13, 2015 5:46 PM EDT

On the newest Billboard 200 albums chart, Kelly Clarkson claimed her third No. 1 with Piece By Piece, as the original American Idol bowed atop the list with 97,000 equivalent albums earned.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the week's most popular albums based on their overall consumption. That overall unit figure combines pure album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).

Let's take a closer look at some of the action on the chart:

-- Hozier, Hozier - No. 12 -- The album hits a half-million in sales (509,000 to date; with 19,000 in the week ending March 8), marking the first debut full-length to cross the sales threshold since the week ending Oct. 19, 2014, when 5 Seconds of Summer's self-titled set reached the milestone.

-- Daft Punk, Discovery - No. 23 -- The 2001 release re-enters the chart and hits its highest position, thanks to a 99-cent deal at Google Play. It surpasses its initial peak of No. 44 (logged in its debut week). It returns with nearly 22,000 copies sold (up 2,795 percent). The same 99-cent Google deal also lifts Beck's Morning Phase (57-19, up 243 percent) and Drake's Thank Me Later (a re-entry at No. 29, up 1,366 percent).

-- Rixton, Let the Road - No. 32 --British band Rixton arrives at No. 32 with its debut album Let the Road. The set shifted 15,000 units in the week ending March 8, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, nearly 13,000 were traditional album sales, which places the set at No. 28 on the Top Album Sales chart.

The quartet has logged two hits on the Pop Songs airplay chart (known as Mainstream Top 40 on billboard.biz): "Me and My Broken Heart" (No. 6 peak on June 14, 2014) and "Wait On Me" (No. 33 on Oct. 25, 2014). The band's current single, "Hotel Ceiling," is bubbling under the threshold of the chart, with spins garnered at 49 top 40 outlets for the week (earning a 20 percent rise in spins).

-- 2Pac, Greatest Hits - No. 138 -- At 5.1 million, the sturdy seller continues to rank as the top-selling rap greatest hits album ever. It's the 20th-best-selling rap album overall in the Nielsen era (1991–present).

-- Blake Shelton, Red River Blue - No. 184 -- Shelton's greatest hits album Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton becomes his third set to sell a million copies, as it shifts another 3,000 this week. Its total sales edge just past the million mark. It joins his previous million-sellers: Based On a True Story (1.46 million) and Red River Blue (1.24 million).