Holiday albums a lackluster genre
By Hannah Karp, Wall Street Journal
Two years ago, it looked as if Christmas albums could help save the record business. But now the holiday genre appears to be losing its sparkle, amid a dearth of releases from giant stars.
Kelly Clarkson’s album, “Wrapped in Red,” released in October, has sold a few hundred thousand copies, but it is trailing sales of the Christmas album from the cast of reality TV’s Duck Dynasty. “Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas” has sold more than 360,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Those numbers are shy of last year’s top releases at this time, and they pale in comparison to Michael Buble’s “Christmas” in 2011, which was the second-best selling album that year, selling more than 2.5 million copies in 2011 and nearly a million copies more since then.