Oscars Visibility (and a Discount) Bumps ‘A Star Is Born’ Back to No. 1
Four months after it last topped the Billboard album chart, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s soundtrack to “A Star Is Born” has returned to No. 1 for a fourth time, thanks to the Academy Awards — and some deep-discount pricing on Amazon.
“A Star Is Born” was up for eight Oscars on Feb. 24, including best picture, and best actor and actress for Cooper and Lady Gaga. It took home one, best original song, for “Shallow” — which Cooper and Lady Gaga performed on the show, sitting cheek to cheek at the piano.
That publicity certainly helped the soundtrack reach No. 1. But so did an Amazon promotion offering downloads of the album at $3.99, which Lady Gaga made sure her 78 million Twitter followers knew about. (A further discount, to $2.99, was moot as far as the chart was concerned; according to Billboard’s rules, only sales made at $3.49 or more count toward an album’s chart position.)
“A Star Is Born” ended last week with the equivalent of 128,000 sales in the United States — up about 150 percent from the week before — which included 76,000 copies sold as a full album and nearly 41 million streams, according to Nielsen.
That success bumped Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” to No. 2 after two weeks at the top, with the equivalent of 116,000 sales, including 127 million streams but just 19,000 copies sold as a full album.
Also this week, two Atlanta rappers reached high positions with brand-new releases: Gunna opened at No. 3 with “Drip or Drown 2,” and Offset, from Migos, landed at No. 4 with his first solo album, “Father of 4.” The soundtrack to the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” — Queen, his band, opened the Oscars show, with the singer Adam Lambert — is in fifth place.
