If another day has gone by, that must mean the sales forecast for Justin Timberlake’s blockbuster The 20/20 Experience album have grown by at least another 50,000-100,000.
Today (March 24), industry sources forecast that the pop star’s new The 20/20 Experience could sell between 950,000 and 975,000 by the close of the tracking week — tonight. (Nielsen SoundScan’s sales week runs Monday-Sunday each week.)
The top 10 of the new Billboard 200 chart, where 20/20 will no doubt be No. 1, will be revealed on Wednesday, March 27.
Can 20/20 sell 1 million in its debut week?
It’s possible that 20/20 could reach a million, but sources are hesitant to go that far with their sales projections. We’ll have to see how the rest of Sunday shakes out for the album. But, it would seem that the album has a quite real shot at reaching the magic million mark.
If 20/20 sells a million in its first week, the RCA Records set would become only the 19th album to do so since SoundScan started tracking music sales in 1991. The last album to sell a million in a week was Taylor Swift’s Red, which moved 1.2 million when it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart last fall.
Presently, Timberlake is gunning for the best sales week for an album by a male artist since Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV sold 964,000 when it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 dated Sept. 17, 2011.
On May 11 — before the RCA Records album came out on March 19 — Billboard first reported that 20/20 was headed for at least 500,000. Then, once the album did drop, its sales projection jumped to 750,000 on the 20th, 800,000 on the 21st, 850,000 to 900,000 on the 22 and now 950,000 to 975,000 today (24). [Billboard.biz]