How Lil Wayne Made the Million

After his album, Tha Carter III, crashed on top of the Top 200 Albums chart with more than a million units sold--the first to do so in three years--the industry has been talking in awe of the rapper's feat.

As a Billboard.com regular, I noticed the sorry sales albums this year were commanding. Albums in the top five have been moving as little as 50,000 units.

Albums sales are dying in profound ways. Downloading has skyrocketed, but digital sales aren't making up for the lack of album sales at all, as Billboard includes both formats in their big album tally-up.

So where are the artists to go? Ten years from now, will there even be a demand for physical albums?

The already feast-or-famine life of recording artists will only get much harder. For those of you unfamiliar with how the record label stuff works, it's like the artist given a huge loan to make an album. They don't start making money once they are able to recoup this money through album royalties, which are often a small percentage of the money they make from selling their albums.

Big acts like Madonna will be fine for years to come because touring brings them huge dollars even if they never recoup the money they used to make an album.

But that's a tiny minority.

So how the heck did Weezy pull off such amazing numbers?

Well, it's really not quite as drop-dead as it seems if you rewind a little bit.

In September 2007, Kanye West pulled over 900,000 units with Graduation, the biggest sales since. Both are big rap artists who grabbed chart-topping singles prior to their album's release.

According to Hollywood Insider, many people were convinced we wouldn't have any more million sellers after 50 Cent's The Massacre (notice the trend of male rappers continuing?).

I'm glad Lil Wayne could prove them wrong, but that doesn't mean the music industry's showing any progress. Statistics still show quickly declining overall album sales.

So, nope Weezy couldn't save us, but he is to be commended. Or at least his label and fans are.

Outside of the U.S. and Canada, the album chart positions are not nearly as impressive because the album sales--like those of Kanye and 50 Cent--are fused in large part due to the leaks, hype, and press surrounding the release. Other countries out there need singles more than anything else.

Rap has always found its greatest success within American turf. The rap scene and underground we have here provides huge word of mouth promotion for artists like Lil Wayne.

I guess they are the ones to call to make sales juicy for Lil Wayne.