Billboard magazine reports a spike in sales of both Beastie Boys albums and digital downloads for the week after the passing of founding member Adam Yauch. Apparenently, over 55,000 albums were sold (up from 4,000 the week before) and 151,000 digital tracks were sold.
Also, with sales of 19,000 for the week, the group's debut album, Licensed To Ill re-entered the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart at #18. A decade ago, an album with such sales numbers wouldn't have made the Top 50. A decade before that, it would have missed the Top 200 completely.
While it is great that people are showing their supoort of Yauch and the Beasties, isn't it just a tad alarming to see that only 55,000 albums were sold? Considering that this is a band that once moved over 700,000 units in a single week, that a meager 55,000 units constitutes a 1000% sales jump for the band seems to indicate just how dead the music industry is these days.
Not nearly as sad as Yauch's passing but further proof that music really has gone the way of the electric typewriter and Walkman.