Another current example is that Katy Perry album. That album now has five number one singles off of it. FIVE! No one's ever had more. Wacko Jacko had 5 off of "Bad." For the last year those songs have been EVERYWHERE. And yet the total sales from the album is only 1.7 million. Doesn't that have to piss off the music industry? Ten years ago "Teenage Dream" would have sold 10 million, easy. Some albums that didn't have ANY hits on it sold that amount in a couple of weeks. Didn't Pearl Jam sell a million + of 'Vs.' in a week?
Tangentially, I read somewhere that now a downloadable track counts as an album sale in amounts of 10. Is that true? Like if Lady Gaga sells a million downloads of "You and I" (1,000,000/10 = 100,000) she'll get credit for selling 100,000 copies of the album it came from ("Born This Way?")
Brian