January 25, 2010

By By Keith Caulfield, L.A

As forecasted last Friday, the "Hope For Haiti Now" benefit album will debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart that will be issued on Wednesday, Jan. 27.

Though the chart has not been finished yet, industry sources suggest that the 20-track "Haiti" album sold close to 150,000 downloads in the week that just ended on Sunday, Jan. 24.

The set, featuring performances culled from last Friday's massive "Hope For Haiti Now" telethon, only reached digital distributors over the weekend, making its sales number all the more impressive. The "Haiti" set will win over Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream," which had been tipped to return to No. 1 with around 80,000 sold.

The "Haiti" set, available exclusively through digital retailers, will be the first digital-only album to top the Billboard 200 in the chart's nearly 54-year history.

All of these sales figures are projections from industry sources based on internal data. The real, final Nielsen SoundScan numbers, as reflected in the Billboard 200 album chart, won't be released until Wednesday, Jan. 27.

Check back in on Wednesday morning when we'll have more news on our new No. 1 as well as the rest of the top 10 albums of the week.

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