Early sales project New Jersey band could sell between 675,000 and 725,000.
By Chris Harris
The Jonas Brothers' A Little Bit Longer Photo: Hollywood
Late last month, "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus released her first true solo album,
Breakout. A week later, Nielsen SoundScan announced that the album had sold nearly 371,400 copies in its first week on sale, entering the
Billboard Top 200 at #1 for the teen sensation's second chart-topping debut.
These days, selling 371,400 records in a week is no small feat — but it now seems as though next week, three brothers from Wyckoff, New Jersey, will surpass that impressive number to score the first #1 debut of their young careers.
Billboard is
reporting that, based on first-day sales, the Jonas Brothers'
A Little Bit Longer could sell as many as 725,000 copies during its first week of commercial release. If the brothers shift that many units, it means theirs will be the year's third-biggest first-week seller, after Lil Wayne's
Tha Carter III (which sold
more than a million copies) and Alicia Keys'
As I Am (which sold 742,400-plus).
This news comes in the middle of a whirlwind week in New York for the boys, which has seen them
hosting "TRL," appearing on
"Good Morning America," wowing fans with a performance at the Apple Store and filming a scene for their forthcoming 3-D concert film in
Central Park. Last week, Cyrus also publicly confirmed for the first time that
she and Nick Jonas were an item.
According to Nielsen SoundScan's Building chart, which was released Wednesday but is not available to most media outlets, the unweighted first-day sales of the set stood at 201,000.
Billboard says the nine merchants who report to that chart — Trans World Entertainment, Best Buy, Circuit City, iTunes, Starbucks, Borders, Target, Anderson Merchandisers and Handleman Co. — constitute about 80 percent of all U.S. album sales. Meanwhile, the Jonas Brothers' label, Hollywood, and its distributor, Universal, project
Longer could end the week with between 675,000 and 725,000 sold.
The band could pull off another first when total album sales figures are released next week. With their latest a veritable shoo-in for the #1 position, the Jonas Brothers' 2007 self-titled effort, which this week sits in the #11 slot, could make a return to the Top 10. If it does, it will be the first time a group has done so since 'NSYNC in late 1998, when their 1998 self-titled effort claimed the #2 spot with 535,700 sold, and 1998's
Home for Christmas rounded out the Top 10 with 265,600 copies scanned.
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