YOUR WEEKLY MARKETSHARE SCORECARD

Pardon the mixed metaphors, but after several weeks of chasing the long tail deep into the rabbit hole in a futile attempt to make sense of the finishing order, this week’s more hit-based standings make sense. A quick glance at the HITS Top 50 Album Sales chart, which shows Florence #1 and Taylor #3, with a combined 162k, readily explains Republic’s victory in that contest. As for TEA, Columbia’s pair of Top 10 singles, as seen in our weekly sales update just below, enabled the label to tighten the gap with Republic, which also had the #1 single in Taylor’s “Bad Blood,” with The Weeknd’s “The Hills” at #10. (Expect the new Weeknd smash “Can’t Feel My Face” to replace this one quite soon, by the way.) So there you go, a tidy, logical pair of bar graphs. Next week could be another matter entirely, of course.