A CHART STORY, BROUGHT TO YOU BY JOANNE

Interscope’s Lady Gaga has topped the Sales Plus Streaming (SPS) Chart with 199k for her highly anticipated, fifth studio album, Joanne.

Reprise’s Michael Bublé followed at #2 with 95k for Nobody But Me, and RCA’s Pentatonix have rounded out the Top 3 with 60k for their latest holiday release, A Pentatonix Christmas. Their version of “Hallelujah” has held in the iTunes Top 10 all week and the video, which garnered 21m+ views via YouTube already, hit #1 at iTunes.

As for the remaining debuts, Korn’s The Serenity of Suffering bowed at #4 with 55k, Chris Tomlin’s Never Lose Sight (Six Steps) came in at #8 with 33k, “Hallelujah” writer Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker (Columbia) followed at #9 with 24k and I Prevail’s Lifelines (Fearless) appeared at #12 with 22k, while The Pretty Reckless’ Who You Selling For (Razor & Tie) appeared at #14 with 21k.

Sia’s This Is Acting (Monkey Puzzle/RCA) saw a nice bump, going #18-10, as the deluxe version—which houses seven new tracks, including “The Greatest” f/Kendrick Lamar—becomes available everywhere. Also, her Nostalgic For the Present Tour continues to power on, and her music was just added to the recently launched Amazon Music Unlimited.

Rae Sremmurd’s SremmLife 2 (Eardruma/Interscope) went #33-26, as single “Black Beatles” goes #8-4 on HITS’ Streaming Songs Chart.

After Kanye West publicly announced that he would boycott The Grammys if Frank Ocean’s Blonde (Boys Don’t Cry)—which missed the submission deadline for eligibility—wasn’t nominated, Blonde surged #37-27. And then there’s the Crush-repped Panic! At the Disco, who went #50-43, powered in part by a $7.99 iTunes sale.

BTW, we’d like to clear something up. Boys do cry… especially middle-aged ones who work at a certain trade magazine that is scheduled to produce four special-edition print magazines in eight weeks. And they cry in the fetal position. Oh, yeah, that reminds us: Be on the lookout for HITS’ upcoming spotlight on the biz’s top managers and new and developing artists. Weeeeeeee!

As for SPS marketshare battle, there’s UMG at #1 with 46%, WEA at #2 with 28% and Sony at #3 with 22%.

Meanwhile, on the Album Sales Chart, 11 of the Top 15 ended up being debuts. Those came from Gaga (#1, 168k), Bublé (#2, 89k), Korn (#3, 52k), Pentatonix (#4, 52k), Tomlin (#5, 31k), Cohen (#6, 23k), I Prevail (#8, 20k), Pretty Reckless (#9, 20k), WMG’s Trans-Siberian Orchestra (#10, 17k), RCA’s Jimmy Eat World (#12, 13k) and Amy Grant (#15, 10k).

This week’s album sales marketshare battle looks similar to the SPS one; there’s UMG at #1 with 42%, WEA at #2 with 31% and Sony at #3 with 24%.

Freshly out this week are albums from Blue Chair/Columbia Nashville’s Kenny Chesney, Capitol’s Avenged Sevenfold, WMG’s Meek Mill, RCA’s Pitbull, Island’s Tove Lo, Astralwerks/Capitol’s Empire of the Sun and Def Jam’s Jeezy, along with Christmas sets from Capitol’s Neil Diamond, Big Machine’s Jennifer Nettles, Mailboat’s Jimmy Buffett, Mercury Nashville’s Kacey Musgraves and Republic’s Jordan Smith.