Trends in popular albums in iTunes

Right now if you were to go into iTunes and click on the music store the first thing you would notice in in bright colors and at the top of the page is the new Nicki Minaj album. It is no wonder why this is the top selling album on iTunes right now. This goes back to the Salganik and Watts reading on popularity of songs. 

Since this album is new it must have generated a lot of searches and downloads on iTunes. This is probably why iTunes is advertising it so heavily on the home page of the music store. When people see the album at the top of the page they have more change of clicking on it and buying it. This advertisement, and the fact that it is the top selling album, will increase popularity and drastically increase the amount of sales.

We can also relate this to the rich get richer effect. Because it started off being popular right away, it shows up more on iTunes and more people are going to see it, thus more people are going to download it. I am a Nicki Minaj fan, but to be honest I didn't think about buying this album until I saw the add for it on iTunes and noticed it was the top selling album. Since it was the top selling album I trusted that it must be really good and worth buying. I anticipate that this is what most people will do and that the album will continue to sell and become more popular.

Just for some comparison I looked at other albums in iTunes top ten selling albums list. One of the other albums in the top three is also advertised on the home page of the music store. The ones at the bottom of the list are not advertised any where else on the iTunes home page. This shows that what is ranked as more popular and more heavily advertised will increase the number of sales and keep increasing the popularity of the albums. I am curious to look next week to see how the ranking of the albums will changed based on what album is advertised at the top of the homepage.