The Boss Is Back On Top

Rolling Stone: Bruce Springsteen's thirteenth studio album, Devils and Dust - released by Columbia Records - sold 222,000 copies this week to beat out pop diva Mariah Carey for the top spot, according to Nielsen SoundScan, becoming his seventh No. 1 album on the U.S. pop charts. The album was released exclusively in the two-sided DualDisc format, featuring the the full album on one side in 5.1 surround sound AND stereo with a one-half hour documentary on the other side...The new format fulfills a real need and could quickly gain more traction as consumers are demanding either lower priced albums or value added extras like video to compete with free downloads...Surprisingly, the 12 tracks are already available for download from the iTunes Music Store, which can sometimes take months for lesser known artists...

Overall, U.S. album sales were up 3.6% over the previous week at 10.6 million units, but still about 0.5% lower than the same week last year and so far, 2005 sales trail last year -  by about 9% at 186 million units...