SoundScanner: What Albums Are People Buying As Holiday Stocking Stuffers This Year?

Cash registers were ringing with music sales during Black Friday and Thanksgiving week. One Direction tops the chart, but an overwhelming majority of albums experiences week-to-week sales gains during the busy holiday frame. For a closer look, we present this week's installment of SoundScanner:

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One Direction tops chart: One Direction's Midnight Memories tops this week's Nielsen SoundScan Top Current Albums chart, selling 546,000 copies its first week. That gives the UK boy band the year's fourth best sales start, behind Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience (968,000), Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (792,000) and Drake's Nothing Was the Same (658,000). The tally is similar to last year's Take Me Home, which started with 540,000 sales, and is much bigger than 2011's Up All Night, which debuted with 176,000 sales. Each of the group's albums has begun its chart runs at No. 1.

Holiday sparks sales: Black Friday and Thanksgiving week shopping helped spike sales across the board; 88 percent of the week's Top 200 albums experience week-to-week sales gains from last week. Big winners include Katy Perry's Prism (No. 5, up 252 percent from the week prior), Luke Bryan's Crash My Party (No. 8, up 318 percent), Miley Cyrus' Bangerz (No. 9, up 228 percent) and Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience: 2 of 2 (No. 11, up 349 percent). Daughtry's Baptized, which debuted at No. 6 last week, falls to No. 21, and is the only album in this week's Top 25 to fall in sales this week.

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Pitbull, Ke$ha rise: Rather than going down, Pitbull and Ke$ha's "Timber" rises this week, all the way to No. 1. The song jumps up three spots from No. 4 on SoundScan's Digital Songs chart, rising to No. 1 for the first time in its eighth week on the chart. The single from the 2013 tourmates sold 237,000 copies this week, up 43 percent from last week, bringing its total sales to 943,000 downloads. Credit the duo's performance of the song on the American Music Awards, as well as the song's video, which was released Nov. 25. "Timber" edges out last week's No. 1, Eminem and Rihanna's "The Monster," which falls one spot to No. 2.

Blake Shelton hits platinum: Another benefactor from the robust holiday sales is The Voice star Blake Shelton, whose 2013 album Based on a True Story (not to be confused with 2 Chainz' Based on a T.R.U. Story) jumps up 11 spots to No. 19 this week and in doing so sails past the 1 million sales marker. The album sold 41,000 copies this week, up 284 percent from last week, bringing its 36-week total to 1.032 million sales. The album debuted at No. 3 when it was released in March.

Garth Brooks back on charts: Country superstar Garth Brooks arrives at No. 3 on this week's chart with his six-CD, two-DVD box set Blame it on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences, a collection of cover songs and greatest hits. The Wal-Mart exclusive, priced to sell at $29.98 (and sale priced for $24.96 during the holiday sales), sold 164,000 copies its first week, and marks Brooks' first charting set since his 2007 Ultimate Hits collection (which also arrived at No. 3). Brooks supported the set with a two-hour concert special that aired on CBS Nov. 29.