An Initial Look At Whitney Houston’s Posthumous Impact On The Charts
As the world prepares for Whitney Houston’s viewing and funeral that takes place for invited guests both today and tomorrow, a summarization of posthumous record sales has come together to show the the skyrocketing effect her death has had on her record sales since it was first announced Saturday afternoon. Seven of the top ten albums on Amizon.com belong to Whitney. Billboard reports, that six of Houston’s albums have made it’s Top 200 for the week. Her Greatest Hits collection broke into the Top 10 with a reported 101,000 albums purchased in the last week.
It almost goes without saying that Whitney’s presence in record sales was felt instantly after the announcement of her death last weekend. This is important to note when looking back on sales now because of the news that broke shortly after her death about ITunes hiking up the price of Whiney Houston’s catalog. As we originally reported earlier this week, it turns out that the ones responsible for the price was the UK branch of Sony Music Entertainment. The price of Houston’s The Ultimate Collection was reportedly raised 60 percent, from $7.85 to about $12.50, and her “Greatest Hits” rose from $12.50 to $15.67. This naturally upset a large amount of Houston’s fanbase. So to help save face and make things right, a Sony Music Executive that preferred to remain anonymous talked to The New York Times about their “mistake”.
“Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the U.K. iTunes store on Sunday,” said The New York Times reported a statement by Sony as saying. “When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologize for any offense caused.”
Industry insiders project Houston’s music to reach even greater heights on the charts next week. Hopefully the retailing of that music will be without any further issues from here on out. We’ll keep you posted if any Whitney chart surge does occur as expected.
