In 2015, Lecrae’s Anomaly shocked the world when it had first week sales of 88,000 units sold, not including streaming. This year’s All Things Work Together has fallen short of that.
According to Hits Daily Double, Lecrae’s newest record, which had the joint efforts of both Reach Records and Columbia Records, only sold between 20K and 23K units. If you factor in streaming, the numbers bump up slightly to between 28K and 32K.
This drop-off of nearly 50,000 first week sales from record to record is huge and there are many speculative conclusions that can be made. Part of the blame has been based on calculating streaming as it negates downloads along with adding two more years of irrelevance to owning a physical CD. The NY Times did a report saying that in the past 10 years alone, CD sales are down 84%. The last two years alone probably saw the majority of that spike.
One of the biggest factors for not just Lecrae, but Christian artists, in general, is the closing of the Nation’s Family Christian Bookstores. Those stores were a hub for Christians to get their new music, and now with around 240 stores closed, Lecrae undoubtedly lost tens of thousands of sales in that venue.
As far as Lecrae himself, some have voiced displeasure with his vocalness toward political and human rights issues, and others take issue with the dismissal of the Christian label. Regardless of what it is for the low opening numbers, the album has still been received very well and hit the no. 4 spot on the iTunes albums chart.
The album reaching Gold status of over 500,000 sold like Anomaly, seems in doubt but anything can happen, especially with the news that YouTube stream will soon be counted as overall streams.
Regardless, Lecrae’s not out here worrying about it too much…
If only people knew the real story lol. We are just fine over here. It’s a true success in so many ways I can’t even begin to articulate.
— Lecrae (@lecrae) October 4, 2017
***INFORMATION UPDATED***