Chart News: Week Of 2/2/2013

MDNA

DANCE / ELECTRONIC ALBUMS: OFF (From #55)

MDNA Tour: Final Box Office Gross

Madonna's 'MDNA' Tour Makes Billboard Boxscore's 

All-Time Top 10

The final numbers are in, and Madonna's 2012 "MDNA" tour has retained her box office form, clocking in at $305,158,363 gross with 2,212,345 in attendance over 88 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. The tour began in Israel last May 31 and finished in Argentina on Dec. 22, hitting Europe, Asia and North America in between.

The "MDNA" final box office tally is enough to rank "MDNA" No. 10 all-time in tours as reported to Boxscore, sandwiched between the Rolling Stones' "Licks" tour of 2002-2003 ($311 million) and the Stones' "Bridges To Babylon" tour of 1997-98 ($274 million).

This is Madonna's second time in the Boxscore Top 10; the "Sticky & Sweet" tour of 2008-09 was third all-time at $408 million, the highest ever for a solo artist. Her 2006 "Confessions" tour came in at $194 million. All of these tours, including "MDNA," were produced by Live Nation's Global Touring division, headed by LNGT chairman Arthur Fogel, who offhandedly predicted to Billboard back in April that MDNA would end up a Boxscore Top 10 tour.

Had "MDNA" played Australian stadiums, as was initially considered, the tour would have moved up a few notches up the all-time list. As it stood and as it stands, "MDNA" was the highest-grossing tour for 2012 according to Boxscore, making it Madonna's third time closing a year at the top of the box office heap, the others being 2009 and 2004. Madonna joined the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Bon Jovi as the only acts to be Billboard's highest-grossing tour twice in a three-year span, and "MDNA" gives Fogel and Live Nation their sixth top tour over the past 10 years.

Chart News: Week Of 1/26/2013 (UPDATED)

OK, some unexpected news this morning. Apparently, Billboard has now expanded the number of positions on the Dance/Electronic Albums chart (and their other genre-based album charts). As a result, MDNA shows up as a re-entry at #55 this week.

In other news, Billboard has launched a new chart called Dance / Electronic Songs. According to Billboard.com:

"Billboard expands its coverage of the burgeoning dance scene by launching Dance/Electronic Songs, the first-ever ranking of the nation's top dance songs combining digital download sales (tracked by Nielsen SoundScan), radio airplay (monitored by Nielsen BDS) and streaming data (tracked by BDS from such services as Spotify, Muve, Slacker, Rhapsody, Rdio, MySpace, Xbox Music and Guvera) and reported club play from a select national panel of 140 club DJs.

Outside of club play data, Dance/Electronic Songs will match the methodology applied to Billboard's signature all-genre songs ranking, the Billboard Hot 100. Titles eligible for the chart will be determined based on a song's core sound and tempo, as they have been for our sales-based Dance/Electronic Digital Songs chart, which launched in 2010. Dance remixes of titles categorized as pop, rock, R&B, rap or another genre would not make a song eligible for Dance/Electronic Songs, even if the title appears on the Dance Club Songs or Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart."

I think it's interesting that they are including club play data into this new chart. Could the old Club Play chart soon be on its way out? That chart has received some criticism in recent years for being old-fashioned and an inaccurate representation of current dance music, mostly because it is the last chart to be compiled in the outdated way of collecting playlists directly from DJ's, instead of using electronic Nielsen data. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I do hope they keep it since Madonna dominates the Club Play chart so consistently. In the meantime, this new Dance / Electronic Songs chart is exciting because it is one that Madonna could appear on in the future :)

MDNA

DANCE / ELECTRONIC ALBUMS: #55 (Re-Entry)

So Now What?

As you can tell, it's been very quiet around here lately since MDNA has fallen off the Billboard charts. I'll be focusing on finishing up all the Video Chart entries over the next few weeks. I think the next big thing we can look forward to chart-wise is the MDNA tour release, which will most likely return Madonna to the charts for (hopefully) at least a few weeks. I've seen rumors that the DVD/Blu-Ray could be released as early as March, but nothing has been confirmed yet. Also, there are all those 'new album' rumors which have been floating around lately, even though Guy Oseary has since shot these down on Twitter. I really doubt we'll get any new music any time soon, but I guess you never know! Let's see what happens...

The Girlie Show-Live Down Under (1994)

Chart News: Week Of 1/12/2013 & MDNA End-Of-Year Total Sales

I haven't seen any evidence that Madonna appeared on any charts this week, so as of now I'm assuming that MDNA fell off the Dance / Electronic chart again. If anyone knows for sure, please let me know.
Update: MDNA officially fell off the Dance / Electronic chart.

MDNA
DANCE / ELECTRONIC ALBUMS: OFF (from #25)

Meanwhile, according to recently released Soundscan sales figures, MDNA finished off 2012 by selling a total of 526,531 copies. It was the 40th best-selling album of the year in the USA. Here's the full list of the year's best-selling albums:

MDNA Tour Box Scores: Miami, Mexico, Colombia & Brazil

Here's the latest round of boxscore figures released by Billboard.biz: