Gord Downie's 'Introduce Yerself' leads Canadian albums chart in first week

Gord Downie, the lead singer of the Tragically Hip, died on Oct. 17, 2017.

Text:

David Friend, The Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, November 8, 2017 1:19PM EST

TORONTO -- Gord Downie's deeply personal final album "Introduce Yerself" climbed to the top of the Canadian charts in its first week.

Driven largely by listeners buying copies as opposed to streaming it, the project sold 10,000 equivalent album units on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart for the week that ended Nov. 2.

Downie's 23-track album arrived in stores the week after the musician died of brain cancer at 53.

Nearly all of its sales came from physical and digital copies. Only about 1,000 units were digital equivalent albums, an industry standard that equates the number of times the album's songs are streamed on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music to the sale of an actual copy.

In second place on the Billboard chart was Ed Sheeran's "Divide" with 6,000 equivalent album sales. About 65 per cent of those sales came from digital streams.

Downie's band the Tragically Hip held the No. 5 position with "Yer Favourites," their 2005 greatest hits compilation. It sold 4,500 copies split almost evenly between album sales and streams.