NEW YORK (AP) ― Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke owned 2013 in music.
Nielsen Entertainment announced last week that Timberlake’s “The 20/20 Experience” was the top-selling album with 2.4 million units sold. Thicke’s ubiquitous “Blurred Lines” was the best-selling song with 6.4 million tracks sold.
Albums sales were down. Only 289.4 million albums were sold in 2013, compared with 316 million a year before. Single tracks also saw a decrease, by 6 percent. Streaming, however, was up 32 percent with 118.1 million streams. The sales figures include data from YouTube, Spotify and other digital outlets. Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” topped the year with 489,674,000 streams.
New releases from Eminem and Luke Bryan rounded out the top three albums. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” placed second and third on the singles list.