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BIG SOAR IN WHITNEY HOUSTON RECORD SALES!

February 15th, 2012 | Add a Comment

I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston‘s biggest hit, sold 195,000 downloads in the week ending Sunday, up from 3,000 copies the week before, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Presumably, most were sold after the singer’s death Saturday afternoon, a sales window of one day.

2006 AP photo

Reports of Whitney Houston’s death surfaced Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, fans had purchased 887,000 digital tracks by the pop superstar.

Always makes its debut on the digital songs chart at No. 3, according to Billboard, which also notes seven other Houston tunes that landed on the list: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) at No. 25 (74,000),Greatest Love of All at No. 32 (60,000), How Will I Knowat No. 46 (43,000), I Have Nothing at No. 53 (38,000),Saving All My Love for You at No. 65 (33,000), One Moment in Time at No. 74 (30,000) and The Star Spangled Banner at No. 75 (29,000).

Postmortem sales of the diva’s other songs and albums also surged. She sold a total of 101,000 albums, up nearly 6,000% from a week earlier. Of those, 91,000 were downloads. The top seller was Whitney: The Greatest Hits, an 18-track set released in 2000. It sold 64,000 copies, 107 times the 600 copies sold the week prior, to re-enter Billboard at No. 6.

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Fans bought 887,000 digital tracks by Houston, compared to 15,000 the week before.

Consumers scooped up more Houston albums last week than in all the preceding weeks of 2012 and all of 2011 combined, Billboard reports. A higher tally is expected after sales from a full week (ending Feb. 19) are tabulated.