by Lesley Aeschliman

Created on: November 15, 2007

So far, Blackout has sold below what many expected. In its first week of release, the album sold 290,000 copies. In its second week, the album managed to sell another 87,000 copies (which was a 70% sales decline). This decline caused Britney to fall five spots on the Billboard Top 200 chart (falling from number two to number seven). For a lot of artists, these would actually be very respectable numbers. For an artist who has Britney's stature, however, this is definitely not a good start for the album.

A second single from the album ("Piece of Me") is starting to be promoted at radio. As of this writing, the song is at #52 on the Mediabase pop chart (the chart that Radio & Records uses for their charts that measures airplay). "Piece of Me" has 421 plays on pop radio stations right now, with a spin gain of 342. Britney's fans are hoping (with some absolutely expecting) "Piece of Me" to become Britney's next "Toxic" (the second single from In The Zone that became a big hit after "Me Against the Music" failed to perform to expectations; "Toxic" helped breathe new life and more sales into her previous album). To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced she can pull that off twice, especially not with all the baggage she's carrying with her this time around.

The fans are also expecting the holiday shopping season to give Blackout a boost. While she may get a small boost, I don't think it's as big of one as the fans are hoping for. The only way that will happen is if "Piece of Me" is able to explode at radio, and blow up within the next couple of weeks. But with the holiday season approaching, that means before long, radio stations will start including some Christmas music into their rotations, which will take away some of airplay spots for songs. This means that Britney could lose potential spins for "Piece of Me" because of this factor.

As things stand right now, it looks like it's going to take a major miracle for Blackout to turn around and become successful enough to revive Britney's music career. Personally, I think Britney needs to take some time off from her career, and work at getting herself and her life back in order. Then when she's in a position to be able to focus on her career, perhaps she'll be able to put out the album that will revive her singing career.

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