By the power of...Wal-Mart?

"New Eagles album, a Wal-Mart exclusive, sold more than twice as many copies.
By Gil Kaufman

Britney Spears just can't catch a break. Even when she makes a positive career move — i.e. a strong album — things seem to fall apart in unprecedented ways.

In this case, after a surprising last-minute rule change on Tuesday night, her expected #1 debut on next week's Billboard albums chart for her fifth effort, Blackout, will be trumped at the finish line by the Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden. Though Britney was pegged to top the charts with sales of 290,000, according to early SoundScan numbers, a press release issued Tuesday afternoon from Wal-Mart, the exclusive retailer of Eden, revealed that the Eagles' first album in nearly 30 years sold 711,000 copies.

Just hours before the press release was issued, a Billboard executive lamented that even though it appeared the Eagles had handily beaten Spears, they would not debut at the top of the charts because of rules forbidding albums exclusively sold at one retail outlet from hitting the Billboard 200.

"In consultation with Nielsen SoundScan, Billboard will now allow exclusive album titles that are only available through one retailer to appear on the Billboard 200 and other Billboard charts, effective with this week's charts," read an article posted on Billboard.biz Tuesday night. "Prior to this, proprietary titles were not eligible to appear on most Billboard charts."


I find this to be pretty amazing...Shows how powerful the late Mr. Walton's company is and how huge their influence is. I do not shop there typically, mainly due to the general fluorescent-light-creepiness-suspended-time-feeling you get when you go in there, and the fact they claim to be all morally upstanding, but still sell controversial albums (albeit with edited lyrics, which the numbers above, I can see why the music types conform to this.)

...personally, I am more of a Target guy.