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"Last week singer-songwriter Amos Lee scored his best-ever sales figures and highest chart placement while setting a more dubious record &amp;#x2013; his Mission Bell (Blue Note/EMI) is the latest album to be named the lowest-selling Number One since SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991. This record has been broken a few times in just the first month of this year, first by Taylor Swift&amp;apos;s Speak Now and two weeks ago by Cake&amp;apos;s Showroom of Compassion. \r\nTaylor Swift: A History in Photos\r\nWith 40,000 copies of Mission Bell sold, Lee fell short of Cake&amp;apos;s sales by only 4,000 units. Though this tally is paltry in terms of top-selling albums even in a slow-moving month like January, it&amp;apos;s a huge leap for the artist, whose previous sales high came in 2008 when his record Last Days at the Lodge moved 16,000 copies in its first week.\r\nLee&amp;apos;s success highlights both positive and negative trends in the music industry. On the upside, the recent run of all-time sales highs by not-quite-mainstream acts such as Lee, Cake, the Decemberists and Iron and Wine indicate that their respective labels have positioned these long-running career artists to do better than ever in the marketplace.\r\nPhotos: Random Notes\r\nOn the downside, the increasingly low bar for topping Billboard&amp;apos;s album chart suggests that it may not mean very much to have a Number One record anymore. In cultural terms, free downloads such as mixtapes may have greater social impact. According to the Game, his mixtape Purp and Patron was downloaded over a million times last week. Since that mixtape was spread around the internet via several websites, not to mention bittorrent sites and other file-sharing methods, it&amp;apos;s almost impossible to get an accurate sense of how many copies were downloaded. Nevertheless, if the Game&amp;apos;s estimate is anywhere in the ballpark of the actual download figures it significantly dwarfs the number of people who paid for Lee&amp;apos;s new record.\r\nAmos Lee Tops Cake With Lowest-Selling No. 1 In SoundScan History; Pink Tops Digital Songs [Billboard]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/amos-lee-breaks-record-for-lowest-selling-number-one-album-20110202>