'Hamilton' Cast Album Heading for Top 10 of Billboard 200 Chart After Tony Awards Triumph
6/13/2016 by Keith Caulfield
Lin-Manuel Miranda of "Hamilton" performs onstage during the 70th Annual Tony Awards at The Beacon Theatre on June 12, 2016 in New York City.
Following Hamilton’s 11 Tony Award wins on Sunday, the musical's original Broadway cast recording is heading for the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time.
Industry forecasters suggest the set could earn upward of 35,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 16. (In the week ending June 9, it tallied 28,000 -- a gain of 29 percent -- and jumped 18-13 on the Billboard 200 chart dated June 25.)
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If Hamilton reaches the top 10, it will be the first cast recording to reach the top 10 since The Book of Mormon in 2011.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new July 2-dated chart (where Hamilton may reach the top 10) is schedule to have its top 10 announced on Sunday, June 19.
The original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton has sold a total of 445,000 copies in the U.S., through the week ending June 9, according to Nielsen Music.
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The set, which was released on Sept. 25, 2015, is already among the top 20 best-selling cast albums of the last 25 years, and is the biggest selling cast album released in more than 10 years. The last cast recording released with greater sales is the original Broadway cast recording of Jersey Boys, which bowed on Nov. 1, 2005 and has sold 1.4 million to date.
Since the Hamilton album debuted 37 weeks ago at No. 12 on the Billboard 200 (the highest debut for a cast album since 1961), the set has yet to depart the list, and has spent the last 13 weeks in the top 20. It recently hit a new peak, climbing to No. 11 on the May 28-dated list.
Thus far, it is the highest charting cast recording since 2011, when The Book of Mormon reached the top 10, peaking at No. 3 in the wake of its multiple Tony Award wins (and a temporary discount price of $1.99 in the Amazon MP3 store).