Amy Winehouse and the Inevitable Sales Spike

From Billboard.com editor Jem Aswad,

Today, the media is exploding with stories about her sales “spike,” “surge,” “skyrocket,” “soar.” This week’s SoundScan totals of 55,000 albums — up by 3,400% from the previous week — and 111,000 digital tracks (up 2,120%) are based on the first 36 hours after news of her death broke. They may be bigger next week, by which point the story will have cooled off — watch for it to last for the rest of this week and flare up again with next week’s SoundScan results.

What gets lost in all this is perspective: For all the talk about her legacy, she leaves behind a sadly thin catalog of two strong albums, two digital-only B-sides collections and a smattering of stray tracks. She was a marvelous singer and a precocious interpreter who left behind precious little evidence of her talent, since her spiral began almost as soon as she became famous; not much she recorded after the age of 23 has been released.

Read the rest here.