Soundtracks Are in a Slump on the Billboard 200

There are just two film or TV soundtracks on the current Billboard 200 album chart – and neither is from a 2024 film. Barbie: The Album, which drops to No. 172 in its 50th week on the chart, was tied to last summer’s box-office juggernaut. Moana, which drops to No. 173 in its 379th week, is the soundtrack to a film that was released way back in 2016.

This is the first time that the highest-ranking soundtrack on the Billboard 200 has ranked as low as No. 172 in the more than seven years that the Billboard 200 and the Top Soundtracks chart have adhered to the same chart formula.

Both charts rank the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).

Everything is the music business is cyclical, and this seems to be especially true with soundtracks. They have years where they dominate the Billboard 200 and years where they hardly make a dent.

From Feb. 11, 2017, the week that the two charts first adhered to the same formula, through the chart dated Sept. 23, 2017, at least one soundtrack appeared in the top 20 every week, thanks to such winners as La La Land, Fifty Shades Darker, Trolls, Moana, Beauty and the Beast, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Purple Rain and Descendants 2.

What’s more, at least one soundtrack appeared in the top 100 every week through April 24, 2021. After that, the ongoing pandemic slowed the flow of hit films, and as a consequence, hit soundtracks. There were 22 weeks in 2021 in which no soundtracks appeared in top 100.

The picture for soundtracks brightened considerably in 2022, thanks largely to Encanto and Elvis. At least one soundtrack appeared in the top 100 every week that year. In 33 of those weeks, at least one soundtrack appeared in the top 20.

There were seven weeks in 2023 in which no soundtracks appeared in the top 100. There have been nine such weeks so far in 2024.

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