TEA

ANYONE FOR TEA? The biz was flat in terms of albums, tracks and TEA compared to last week—not only that, but RCA, Republic and Capitol Music Group finished 1-2-3 the top three in TEA for two weeks running as well as on this week’s new-release marketshare chart (see 10/16 item below). As you may have noticed from the track sales leaders immediately below, Republic got a grande-sized TEA contrib from “Royals” and another from Drake’s latest hit, while “Wrecking Ball,” RCA’s top-selling track, barely surpassed “Hold On, We're Going Home.” But when you divide all of the above by 10 and add them to the labels’ respective album sales, the effect is like peeing (or TEAing) in the ocean, given Miley and JT’s collective 346k in album units—and that’s not even counting the contributions of Cage the Elephant, KOL, 20/20 vol.1 or P!nk. We’ll likely see a reshuffling next week, considering that Republic will almost certainly have the top-selling debut album by a mile with Pearl Jam but also the probable #3 in the Avett Brothers, with a combined estimate in the neighborhood of 240k (see 10/16 item below). (10/17a)